Assessment of wind energy potential using reanalysis data: A comparison with mast measurements

Reanalysis datasets are widely used for wind resource assessment (WRA) when measured data is unavailable. Due to variation in wind resource, it is essential to establish the suitability of such datasets for the selected region by comparison with available measured data. This work is a pioneering attempt at performing detailed comparison between NASA MERRA-2 and 50 m mast measured wind speed data in Odisha state of India. Initially, the descriptive statistical measures are computed followed by computation of relevant error measures and correlation analysis between the datasets. In the next step, selected marginal distributions are fitted and goodness-of fit statistics are compared. Finally, the wind power density computed using data from both the sources are examined. It is found that the datasets can be considered to be in agreement only for longer durations such as a year; large differences are observed in hourly, monthly and seasonal variations. Wind power density computed from the two sources widely vary across months which is expected to affect the utility of MERRA-2 data for computing monthly and seasonal energy capture. The work is novel both in the details of the analysis using measured wind resource and the application region, that is, the east coast of India. The results of the analysis are expected to enrich the existing literature on wind resource probabilistic modelling and utility of MERRA-2 for WRA studies.