Effect of Climate Variability Events over the Colombian Caribbean Offshore Wind Resource

Abstract

The need for reducing the CO2 emissions and fossil fuel dependence of several countries generated a growing interest for the Renewables. The Caribbean Sea is characterized by persistent and high magnitude winds, which suggest an important source of offshore wind energy. Recent studies reported that the Colombian Caribbean has a relevant opportunity for developing the offshore wind technology which could complement the energy production when the hydroelectric system is under low generation due to persistent dry conditions generated by El Niño events. The offshore wind energy may complement the energy offer of Colombia. Hence, understanding the impact of climate variability events in the Caribbean over the wind magnitude, contributes to the knowledge of the resource availability for a better planning of future offshore wind farms. In this sense, this study analyzed 39 years of Reanalysis wind data through a time series analysis of the Caribbean to identify the lowest wind speed velocities and when and why they occurred. The results showed that winds of the study area represented by the Caribbean Low level, showed the lowest wind speeds in the short, mid, and long term due to the influence of the seasons, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).

A Review of Offshore Renewable Energy in South America: Current Status and Future Perspectives

“…Ecuador (1), wave; Guyana (1), wind; Peru (1), wave; and Venezuela (5), tidal, wave and wind are the other South American countries that have worked in this area. The majority of these works are associated with the resource assessment, for instance, [22][23][24][25], as well as topics such as techno-economic feasibility [26][27][28], device performance and application of control systems [29,30], resource variability [31,32], resource complementarity, such as wave energy and ocean current in Brazil as presented in [33]. Additionally, some researches address the environmental and economic impacts of ORE [34,35], investigate the regulatory aspects [36,37] and analyze the environmental licensing [38,39].…”

“…Over the past 15 years, several scientific documents have been published. Most of them addressed the offshore wind potential at regional [87][88][89] and national-local scales [24,32,[90][91][92][93][94]. Technical aspects of offshore-wind development have been addressed, such as the effect of extreme events [95], opportunities for employing the current shipping building industry [96] and the general feasibility of its implementation in the country [97][98][99].…”

Hydrokinetic Energy and Transient Accelerations of Marine Currents in Colombian Nearshore Waters

“…The overall behavior of the current profile in the study area for the semester showed surface currents to the south-east (90-170 • ) with mean velocities of 0.5 m/s and a maximum of 0.8 m/s (Figures 7 and 12). When surface winds decrease from August to November due to the weakening of the CLLJ [22,38,[43][44][45], the Caribbean Counter Current (CCC) or the Panama-Colombia Counter current are affected, reducing its presence in the central coastal area (CCA) of the Colombian Caribbean [26]. When CCC turns back from the CCA to the north area of Colombian Caribbean, the Panama Colombia Counter Current (PCCC) [38] flows northmost near the Colombian coast carrying warm waters and forming a mixing zone when approaching the Magdalena River's mouth [25].…”

“…The Colombian Caribbean coast is considered a region with significant availability of offshore wind [19] and wave power energy [20], where mesoscale climate events affect energy source dynamics [21,22]. Marine currents have not yet been characterized for energy purposes in the nearshore areas of the Colombian Caribbean, but there exist reports of marine currents for marine energy extraction in deep waters [23].…”