Long-term wind resource and uncertainty estimation using wind records from Scotland as example

An analysis of the sensitivity of the wind resource at different sites in Scotland was performed. The main aims of this study are (a) to analyse the electricity production for a typical wind turbine using hourly wind measurements at seven sites in Scotland, and (b) to identify any long-term trend in that production reflecting possible climate change. A 46-year long data set of wind measurements from seven UK Meteorological Office surface stations at the Glasgow-Edinburgh latitude, capturing typical situations in that region, from coastal sites exposed to the Atlantic to sheltered suburban sites. The annual variations of the wind speeds were analysed in terms of the capacity factor which an idealised wind turbine would achieve at the height of the anemometer of 10 m above ground and at an extrapolated height of 80 m. One of the items of discussion was motivated by the observation in the wind industry that the year 2010 was a poor year, with hopes that it was just an exceptional year and fears that it might be an indicator of continuing climate change. The result of this discussion is that 2010 can only be seen as an outlier if one assumes that the past decades represent a constant wind climate but allowing for a slow climate drift, suggests that 2010 may have been a low-wind year but consistent with generally observed fluctuations around a changing wind climate.