Wind resource assessment in cold climate regions

Abstract

Cold regions have good potential for wind energy development, but icing on wind turbines is recognize as a hindrance limiting the wind energy production in ice prone cold regions. This master thesis work is linked with Wind-CoE project of Arctic Technology Research Team and is aimed on better understanding of wind resource assessment in cold regions. Three years (2013-15) field SCADA data from Nygårdsfjellet wind park located in an ice prone region near Narvik is used for this study. This work encompass both analytical and numerical analysis to better estimate the annual energy production (AEP) and study of wind flow physics over complex terrain. Computational fluid dynamics based numerical techniques has been used. A good agreement is found between analytical and numerical results.