Inter Annual Variability of wind speed in India

Abstract

This paper deals in studying the Inter Annual Variability (IAV) of wind speed in the Indian context which is one of the major governing parameters in determining the uncertainties involved in the energy yield estimation of the wind farm projects. The aim is to better understand the country-specific Inter Annual Variability of wind to have more robust/accurate energy predictions for wind projects. The quantification of Inter Annual Variability of wind speed across the country has been carried out using 30 years of the ERA5 Reanalysis data set. The result indicates that the IAV is in the range of 3.51% for the Onshore region and 3.78% for the Offshore region of India when compared to 6% which is generally being adopted in the wind energy industry. The convergence analysis has also been carried out to indicate the minimum length of data needed to reasonably represent the long-term IAV value.

KEYWORDS:

• Wind resource
• Inter Annual Variability
• ERA5
• uncertainty
• energy yield estimation
• reanalysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mr A.G. Rangaraj, Mrs A. Shobana Devi, Mr A. Sasi Kumar, Mrs Usha Devi, Mr V. Sridhar and Mrs Rapeti Pushpa Saroja for their technical support at different stages of this work. Mr A. Hari Bhaskaran, Mrs Deepa Kurup and Mr B. Krishnan are gratefully acknowledged for their valuable feedback and fruitful discussion. We further would like to mention that the views expressed in the article are solely the opinions of the authors based on the analysis and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institution or the Government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

ERA5 reanalysis is available from C3S Climate Data Store, see https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47 (C3S 2017), last access: 22nd October 2020.