Metodologia para elaboração de mapa de potencial eólico de regiões metropolitanas

Abstract

The goal of this work is to present a methodology to estimate the wind speed in an urban environment, through mesoscale and microscale models. The mesoscale model was obtained using Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) methods, which consider geographic data, such as roughness, elevation, vegetation index and meteorological information. The meteorological data are obtained from global reanalysis performed by the National Centers for Environmental Forecasting (NCEP), which provide a time series composed of several years of measurements and radiosonde data. This informations were processed by the UL Renewables Consulting’s supercomputers and handed over to be used as a basis for the wind potential map. The microscale model was used to adjust the mesoscale predictions using both data collected from five measurement towers with 30 m height installed in the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba (RMC) and elevation and roughness databases. Thus, the presented methodology addresses how the microscale data were obtained, treated and processed with the mesoscale data. As a result, a wind potential map was generated with a 50 m×50 m resolution at a height of 30 m, which may contribute to the development of the micro and mini wind energy generation sector, since through this map it is possible to identify with greater precision the locations with better potential for the installation of small wind turbines in metropolitan regions. Electricity generation from renewable energy sources has experienced a growing trend in recent decades, driven primarily by several countries’ incentive granting to distributed micro and mini-generation. This type of generation can provide important benefits to the electrical power system, such as postponing or reducing the investments on the distribution and transmission systems’ expansion, low environmental impact, losses’ reduction and energy matrix diversification. Despite the mentioned incentives, it is observed that the micro and mini wind energy generation in urban regions does not show compatible growth, especially when compared to wind energy generation in rural regions and solar energy generation. The lack of studies on wind energy potential in urban regions may be a determining factor for the sector’s limited economic development. The data obtained through the proposed methodolody were compared to mesoscale data and to the Brazilian Wind Atlas. It was found that the results of this work are closer to the data collected in the field, therefore being more faithful to reality.