Wind Energy Community of Practice Dr. Thierry Ranchin, Ecole des Mines de Paris Mark Ahlstrom, WindLogics/IEEE Dr. Charlotte Bay Hasager, Risø (and other.

Wind EnergyCommunity of Practice

Dr. Thierry Ranchin, Ecole des Mines de Paris

Mark Ahlstrom, WindLogics/IEEEDr. Charlotte Bay Hasager, Risø

(and other proposed CP members)

Objectives – Wind Energy CP

• Support GEOSS outcomes related to application of EO data toward valuable wind energy results:– Siting– Design– Forecasting– Integration– Operation

• Wind energy community: users of the energy, suppliers of systems and components, electricity transmission and distributions operators, providers of services, market players

Societal Benefit

Why Wind Energy Now? • Mature technology• Wind is fastest growing source of energy

in the world today• Huge potential in both developed and

developing countries• Dramatic benefit in improved siting,

energy varies with cube of wind speed• Improved forecasting crucial to utility

integration and operations

Justification

Requires interdisciplinary knowledge and disparate information that go beyond existing collaborative activities:– Weather data archives for site modeling– Weather forecasting in all timeframes– Boundary layer meteorology– Climate analysis and long-term variability– Extreme event analysis and temporal change– Turbulence information– GIS, land use data, surface roughness data, orography– Ocean parameters– Infrastructure compatibility– Environmental impacts

Earth Observation for Wind

Advantages Limitations• Wide area observations

(e.g. met mast gives only point data, can there be a better site nearby?)

• Ability to monitor remote places in a non-intrusive & objective manner

• Uniform in space, consistent in time, cost-effective

• Ability to go back in time (e.g. existence of archive to detect changes, trend). Ideal for decisions regarding long-term investment such as wind farms.

• Indirect measure - need ground truth (i.e. less accurate than in-situ)

• Limited sampling (space, time, holes, clouds)

• Availability (e.g. SAR?)

• Need value-adding to turn data into information

Offshore Wind Energy

Active remote sensing for resource assessment

Scatterometer• Coarse Resolution (O(25)km)• Good temporal frequency• Long-term archive • BUT does not work close to coast where wind farms are built

Synthetic Aperture Radar• High Resolution (O(150)m) • BUT Low temporal revisit• Archive (mainly ERS, ENVISAT, RADARSAT)

Need to combine EO sources BUT better used to get the spatial variability rather than magnitude

Courtesy RISOE (DK)

Offshore Wind Energy

EO-based wave statistics to support design of vessels for operations & maintenance and fatigue loading estimation

EO-based water quality data for Environmental Impact

Assessment

MERIS data Courtesy ESACourtesy ARGOSS (NL) & BMT (UK)

What is the availability of wind farms? Can I send a vessel to repair? What kind of vessels? Should I invest in maintenance or more turbines?

Onshore Wind Energy

EO-based roughness & Digital Elevation Model for wind modelling

Contributing to Enhanced Wind Energy Modeling Results

Courtesy ARMINES (FR) Courtesy WindLogics (USA)

Raw EO data Information & Services End-User Application

Backscatter from Synthetic Aperture Radar

Wind rose retrieved through numerical model of boundary layer

Integration with ancillary data Sources into user software

Adding to the Value Chain

Aim to make the end-to-end EO value chain more effective by:

• Delivering information services

• Organising the supply (e.g. developing infrastructure and standards)

• Federating the demand (e.g. user-pull, not technology pushed)

Wind Life Cycle / Data Needs

Courtesy Armines (Fr)

Services Resource Assessment:

• Nowcast - NRT monitoring

• Hindcast - archive

• Forecast - modelling

Services Environmental Impact

Data Issues:

• Error bar (DA, risk)

• Certification

• Benchmark

Data Requirements depend on the phase

Wind energy can be the model for a broader Renewable Energy Community for GEOSS

InnovationAlgorithmsFeedback

Applications

ServicesScience

Structure of WE CP

• Steering Committee with worldwide representation– End users– Experts– Participants from the national or international

programs– Participants from space agencies– Policy makers/analysts

• Core Working Groups – Experts– Members of the Community of Practices

Activities

• Development of core working groups• Workshops for users• Standardisation (Metadata, protocols,

architecture, databases, information…)• Building networks and develop incubation

projects• Coordination of users requirements across

energy societal area and societal benefits areas

• Favouring business development• Disseminating and educating GEOSS

potential and best practices

Products and Schedule for 2006-2007

• Approval of TOR and CP (Dec 2005)• Initiate user survey (Feb 2006)• Workshops (TBD in 2006, 2007)• Draft report and recommendations (July 2006)• Report to User Interface Committee (Nov 2006)• Initiate Incubation projects through virtual

centers (early 2007)• Coordinate developing of networks of Databases

and Information (2007)• Outreach activities (2006 -2007)

Wind Energy Community of Practice

Courtesy WindLogics (USA)