The application of MCP techniques and CFD modelling for wind resource assessment in a mediterranean island context

Abstract

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.This paper presents salient results from an ongoing investigation into wind behaviour and resources characterisation on the central Mediterranean Maltese archipelago. The ultimate aim is to enable a more accurate determination of the potential for electrical wind power generation in the onshore and inshore marine environments. One area of this research is seeking to generate longer-term wind characteristics at selected locations. The strategy used involves a combination of field measurements at a number of onshore points and the use of Measure-Correlate-Predict (MCP) techniques in conjunction with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. This current study will present selected results from the validation process underway to establish the performance of MCP and CFD in a sub-tropical island context.