Wind energy potential assessment for the offshore areas of Taiwan west coast and Penghu Archipelago

The average wind speed and wind power density of Taiwan had been evaluated at 10 m, 30 m and 50 m by simulation of mesoscale numerical weather prediction model (MM5). The results showed that wind energy potential of this area is excellent. Taiwan has offered funds to encourage the founding of offshore wind farms in this area. The purpose of this study is to make a high resolution wind energy assessment for the offshore area of Taiwan west coast and Penghu archipelago by using WAsP. The result of this study has been used to the relative financial planning of offshore wind farm projects in Taiwan. The basic inputs of WAsP include wind weather data and terrain data. The wind weather data was from a monitoring station located on a remote island, Tongi, because that all of weather stations in the area of Taiwan west coast are affected by urbanization. SRTM was selected to be used as terrain data and downloaded from CGIAR-CSI for voids problem. The coverage of considered terrain area in this assessment work is about 300 km x 400 km that made some difficulties to run wind energy assessment of the whole area with a high resolution of 100 m. So the interested area of this study is divided into 19 areas for the wind energy assessment and mapping. The assessment results show the Changhua area has best wind energy potential in the area of Taiwan west coast which power density is above 1000 W/m(2) height and the areas of Penghu archipelago are above 1300 W. These results are higher than the expected from NWP. 180 of 3 MW wind turbines were used in the study of micro sitting in the Changhua area. The type and number of the wind turbines and the layout of the wind farm is similar to the prior study of Taipower Company for demonstrating the reliability of this study. The assessment result of average net annual energy production (AEP) of the wind farm is about 11.3 GWh that is very close to the prior study. The terrain effect is also studied. The average net annual energy production will decrease about 0.7 GWh if the wind turbines were moved eastward 3600 m closer to the coast because of terrain effect. As the same reason, the average net annual energy production would be increased to 11.392 GWh if the wind farm is moved westward 3600 m away from the coast. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.