Wind speed persistence at the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, Brazil

The use of wind energy has been growing worldwide continuously over the last years due to global efforts to combat climate change. The modern turbines are becoming ever more cost effective and are gaining features that aim to reduce further the impact on the environment, such as reducing noise or increasing the height. In this context, the current study investigates the persistence of wind in Fernando de Noronha archipelago, an important Brazilian ecological site, using hourly wind speed data at 100-m height. To this end, data from Era5 reanalysis were used, as they present high resolution and good performance in estimating meteorological data, and two well-known methods were applied to quantify wind persistence: duration curve and conditional probability. In addition, a novel method is proposed regarding persistence probability of periods of viable energy generation. The results obtained show that Fernando de Noronha archipelago presents rather high wind persistence on a monthly scale, with considerably long intervals of wind speed useful for wind power generation.