Long-Term Profiles of Wind and Weibull Distribution Parameters up to 600 m in a Rural Coastal and an Inland Suburban Area

An investigation of the long-term variability of wind profiles for wind energy applications is presented. The observations consists of wind measurements obtained from a ground-based wind lidar at heights between 100 and 600 m, in combination with measurements from tall meteorological towers at a flat rural coastal site in western Denmark and at an inland suburban area near Hamburg in Germany. Simulations with the weather research and forecasting numerical model were carried out in both forecast and analysis configurations. The scatter between measured and modelled wind speeds expressed by the root-mean-square error was about 10 % lower for the analysis compared to the forecast simulations. At the rural coastal site, the observed mean wind speeds above 60 m were underestimated by both the analysis and forecast model runs. For the inland suburban area, the mean wind speed is overestimated by both types of the simulations below 500 m. When studying the wind-speed variability with the Weibull distribution, the shape parameter was always underestimated by the forecast compared to both analysis simulations and measurements. At the rural coastal site although the measured and modelled Weibull distributions are different their variances are nearly the same. It is suggested to use the shape parameter for climatological mesoscale model evaluation. Based on the new measurements, a parametrization of the shape parameter for practical applications is suggested.