Free access to unique wind energy measurements

With a moraine hill rising steeply from Roskilde Fjord, the peninsula Bolund has its own special profile. This is not just a beautiful place for walking, but particularly suitable for studying complicated wind conditions in a mountainous terrain, which is normally rather difficult in Denmark.

Setting up meteorological masts at Bolund in 2007, gave scientists from Risø DTU’s Wind Energy Division a quite unique set of data. The data were used in a so-called blind comparison in 2009, where scientists from Europe, the USA and Canada used their own wind calculation programmes and a general description of the topography at Bolund to estimate the wind speed around this steep hill.

By comparing the ”blind” calculations with the actual measurement data, you get important knowledge about the accuracy of today’s wind programmes, which makes the Bolund measurements a good reference, when new tools for predicting the wind are to be certified. Thus, the measurements may be of great importance to the wind turbine industry.

By now, Risø DTU scientists have had two articles about the Bolund measurements and the blind comparison published in the prestigious journal ‘Boundary-Layer Meteorology’. Only a few days after the articles were published, they topped the list of downloads and there were several inquiries about access to the data series.

”We are pleased about the great interest and hope that our measurements and analyses will benefit many scientists within various fields such as meteorology, wind tunnel measurements, turbulence theory and measurement uncertainty” says Andreas Bechmann, Senior Scientist.

www.springerlink.com/content/676766323535706r/

www.springerlink.com/content/r78052840x476825/

www.risoe.dtu.dk/