The back-and-forth in the comments on this answer sent me searching for a simple tool that would enable a user to put in a location, wind turbine size, and a few other parameters, in order to estimate power output. Essentially PVWatts, but for wind turbines. Does such a tool exist?
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2 Answers
https://www.renewables.ninja/ will give you a crude estimate. But it's not very useful - it will often be very wrong for onshore wind.
In general, for any onshore wind, or any offshore wind close to shore, we're some time away from being able to do this usefully. The input data that's required just isn't available.
It's a much more difficult problem for wind, than for PV, because local factors have a much stronger effect for wind.
For PV, as long as the proposed PV installation isn't over-shaded, then having the solar and temperature data averaged for the local 25km x 25km grid square or so (and knowing the latitude) is sufficient to get a good estimate of average PV generation, and how it varies over the year. That sort of data is readily available for the whole world.
However, for wind, local factors make a huge difference, and the available data just isn't granular enough to be able to have a general estimator: the location of one tree here or there, one building here or there, how wind moves around the nearest hill in the direction of the prevailing wind, can all make a big difference. So local site surveys and site-specific modelling are always needed.
Start here: https://globalwindatlas.info/
Provides an estimate of the potential wind resource in the region, along with the wind distribution speed, the wind direction distribution.
answered Sep 3, 2018 at 20:25
