Support of wind resource modeling using Earth observation A European perspective on the status and future options

The fact that the power production of wind turbines is sensitive to the mean wind speed approaching the turbine means that small errors in wind speed modeling will translate to much larger uncertainties in the power output of wind energy installations. The mean wind speed is in turn highly variable and sensitive to properties of the underlying land surface. Wind resource modeling is performed by using dedicated aerodynamic microscale models for limited areas as well as numerical weather prediction (NWP) for the meso- to continental scale. In general, two types of land surface description inputs are needed for this: 1. A digital elevation model (DEM) that describes the variation in terrain elevation 2. A set of surface parameters affecting the wind flow.