Numerical Study of the Wind Energy Potential in Bulgaria - Some Preliminary Results

The new energy efficiency politics of the EU requires till year 2020 16% of Bulgarian electricity to be produced from renewable sources. The wind is one of renewable energy sources. The ecological benefits of all the kinds of "green" energy are obvious. It is desirable, however, the utilization of renewable energy sources to be as much as possible economically effective. This means that installment of the respective devices (wind farms, solar farms, etc.) should be based on a detailed and reliable evaluation of the real potential of the country. Detailed study of the wind energy potential of the country - spatial distribution, temporal variation, mean and extreme values, fluctuations and statistical characteristics; evaluation from a point of view of industrial applicability can not be made only on the basis of the existing routine meteorological data - the measuring network is not dense enough to catch all the details of the local flow systems, hence of the real wind energy potential of the country spatial distribution. That is why the measurement data has to be supplemented by numerical modeling. The wind field simulations were performed applying the 5th generation PSU/NCAR Meso-Meteorological Model MM5 for years 2000-2007 with a spatial resolution of 3 km over Bulgaria. Some preliminary evaluations of the country wind energy potential, based on the simulation output are demonstrated in the paper.