Why is the wind still being measured in areas where the wind resource is known?
A huge network of wind measurement towers has been installed in the past, many wind maps of different areas and software apps have been developed which allow us to estimate the wind and the mesoscale models have been calibrated and provide increasingly reliable information. So currently, estimating the wind resource is easy in many places, without the need to install a tower.
🗨️ So why are towers still installed in many countries and not in Germany for example? This is due to the impact of several factors such as:
👉 The first is that to install a wind farm you have to make a very significant investment, and the agents involved in the financing process are conservative and do not want to take risks.
👉 The second is that there are local effects in complex terrains. In countries with flat orography and small wind farms (such as Germany) theoretical models give sufficient credibility to economic agents. When the terrain is complex, the wind characteristics are not so easily calculable.
Remember, the kinetic energy of the wind is a quadratic function of its speed and every error in wind speed aggravates the losses. If there is a possibility of having local effects or the park is very large, the chance of error implies a great financial risk.
✅ The reality is that the safest and most accurate way to understand the wind is to install a measurement tower on the site of the future wind farm. The cost of the tower is very low, facing the cost of finding a lower production than expected.
It is also especially important to install met masts according to the recommendations of auditors and current regulations (such as IEC61400-12 v2) and with high-performance equipment, to minimize uncertainties that may worsen the financing conditions.
