Development of a wind resource map based on mesoscale model WRF over the Korean Peninsula

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of electricity and the fastest growing markets in the world. Development and growth of wind energy are extending in many countries such as USA and Europe. In order to encourage wind energy industry and assessment of wind resource in Korea, it is necessary to provide accurate and detail wind resource map. We establish wind resource map using numerical model over the Korean Peninsula.

The model which is used in this study is Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) that is developed in NCAR. It is implemented a high resolution topography with a 100-m resolution and a land-use data which has a 30-m resolution over the Korean environment for the improvement of lower atmosphere forecast in WRF. WRF has conducted with a 1km resolution which is forecasted using NCEP FNL data employed as initial and boundary condition. We evaluate the various planetary boundary layer physics and land surface model in WRF to investigate the impact of lower wind forecast over the South Korea.

The performance of a wind speed forecast validated using surface and upper observation to evaluate the model physics over the South Korea. Forecasted wind speed is higher than observation generally. The difference of wind speed forecast and observation at 80 m altitude is in the range of 0.1-1 m/s for intensive observation cases. The tendency of wind speed overestimation decreased by the improvement of land-use data. Wind forecast was influenced by the planetary boundary layer physics rather than land surface model. The improvement of boundary conditions and sensitivity experiment of model physics contributed to the development of wind resource map over the Korean Peninsula.

The WRF model has run for one year for the wind map over the South Korea. The running periods that is named as typical meteorological year (TMY) is chosen by statistical method. The performance and wind characteristics of the TMY results over the South Korea would be presented in the conference.