Wind energy at remote islands in arctic region—A case study of Solovetsky islands

Abstract

This paper describes a case study of wind resource assessment and wind park design at Solovetsky Islands, which are located in the Arctic region of northern Russia. The Solovetsky historical and cultural complex has been included in the list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. 18 year's data of wind climatology from the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is used for wind resource assessment at Solovetsky Islands for two different wind park locations. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based numerical simulations are carried out for wind resource assessment and for the estimation of the resultant Annual Energy Production (AEP) for both locations. To better understand wind flow physics and effects of wind turbine wake effects, three different wake models are used for the numerical simulations. Analyses of seasonal weather effects on energy production show that wind power production at Solovetsky Islands is higher during winter period as compared to summer period, mainly due to higher wind speeds and air density at cold winter conditions. A preliminary case study about wind park layout optimization has also been carried out, where results show an increase in AEP with the optimization of wind park layout.

Simulating wind characteristics through direct optimization procedures: illustration with three Russian sites

“…In the present study, the wind distributions are first ordered in an increasing way and classified in 20 classes, according to Brook-Carruthers' formula (3). In the present study, the optimal parameters of a unique or of a superposition of two von Mises function are again determined using the Scilab software and direct optimization procedures dealing with either the density or the probability.…”

“…Wind resource assessment can contribute to the successful implementation of a wind park project and prevent from fatal mistakes at the design stage. Northern areas have high wind energy potential [1][2][3].…”

Interdecadal Variation Trend of Arctic Wind Energy

“…Human activities have a more significant impact on wind energy changes. Ghani et al [22] used NOAA data and Computational fluid dynamics numerical simulation method to assess the wind energy resources of the Solowitsky Islands. It was pointed out that the Solowitsky Islands have higher wind power generation in winter.…”

“…Some scholars have investigated the distribution and development of wind energy resources in the Arctic [21,22,24,26], but there are several challenges. Firstly, the research is not comprehensive enough as most analyses focus on specific areas or archipelagos, lacking a holistic view of the region's wind energy resources.…”