MEGAJOULE Validates Wind Farm Production Estimates

May 10, 2012 - PRLog -- During 2011 MEGAJOULE has completed its first comprehensive validation program for Wind Farm preconstruction estimates.
The estimated average annual wind farm energy production and corresponding uncertainty, from previous wind assessments, was compared with the actual production from a number of wind farms. Resulting statistics can be used to assess the reliability of estimates.

The validation was based on 12 Wind Farms located in Portugal with a total of 45 independent Wind Farm Years. For historic reasons, all 12 Wind Farms are located in Portugal and the operational periods range from 2006 to 2011 with an average of
about 4 years of operation per Wind Farm.

In order to exclude the impact of each year windiness from the analysis, the Portuguese Windiness Index published by APREN (Portuguese Renewable Energy Association) and MEGAJOULE was considered.

Board Member and Chief Technical Officer Ricardo André Guedes believes that ”Validating our methodologies is critical to understand where we are in technical terms and what we can improve. Our results, in line with those from other consultants, prove that we have come a long way in what regards to accuracy in wind assessment and energy estimates. Still, there are several opportunities for improvement. Advanced flow and wake modelling, remote sensing and better understanding of turbine performance in complex terrain are some of them. We are already working hard in CFD wind assessment and are confident that estimates can see significant improvements.”

Results from validation have shown a very reasonable agreement with real production. In average, the real annual production for the studied Wind Farm Years, already corrected for Availability and windiness, were only 1.1 % below estimates. The estimated P90 was reached for more than 90% of cases, show also a reliable uncertainty assessment.

These results will be presented by Ricardo André Guedes in the PWEA 2012 conference in Warsaw next 23 May.

MEGAJOULE, as Portuguese market leader in wind assessment, is strongly committed to promote alternative and sustainable energy solutions. MEGAJOULE’s core business is wind assessment, but there is a wide range of technical services MEGAJOULE offers from advanced flow simulation (CFD and mesoscale) to power performance tests and independent project due diligence. Acting globally MEGAJOULE also provides advice on solar PV projects. In addition to the creation of the innovation branch MEGAJOULE|Inovação, MEGAJOULE has opened offices in Brazil, Poland and Romania in the beginning of this year.

For more information please contact:
Rute Teixeira, PR Specialist
rute.teixeira@megajoule.pt