Welcome to the Met Office special edition of Wind Review which highlights the wind performance for the whole of 2011 compared with 2010 and against the long-term wind trends for individual regions and specific sites across the UK and Europe. The review also highlights the performance of the last three years of wind against the long term.
Wind Review, launched by the Met Office a year ago, aims to address the serious concerns raised by the industry about the relatively low wind levels experienced throughout the UK and Europe during the last three years. Equally, we have just experienced the highest renewable wind energy ever generated, which contributed an average of 5.3% of the UK’s demand for electricity in December 2011, reaching a record share of 12.2% on 28 December. It is critical to the calculation of long-term power yield projections for any site that such periods of sustained lower and higher wind periods are properly taken into account.
Our aim in publishing this review is to highlight the need for more accurate, site-specific wind assessments as the basis for more realistic power predictions. This is something the Met Office is able to provide, and as a result, the industry can more effectively manage the significant wind risks associated with investments in new and existing projects.
We have used data generated from our weather model to create a wind index, ranking fifteen regions across Europe by comparing the average wind speed for 2011 against the long-term average. The table also compares, as a percentage, the combined average wind speeds in 2009, 2010 and 2011 to the long-term average and 2011 against 2010.
It can be seen from the table that northern and particularly northwestern parts of Europe, such as Iceland, the British Isles, Denmark, the Baltic States and Scandinavia, had a very windy year. Looking at the individual location graphs for Cambridge and Versailles this seems to be down to two particular periods of windy weather; one during May and one during December. In May, areas of low pressure were steered across northern but especially northwestern areas of Europe, which can be seen in the graphs; the UK being quite windy during this month whereas just to the south, across northern France, it was closer to average.
December was a notably windy month, with some exceptionally stormy periods. This month also saw windy weather on a far greater scale, reaching not only Versailles but also extending its influence as far south as Lake Constance. It is also noteworthy comparing this year with 2010 across the northwestern areas. Some places, such as Iceland and the British Isles were far windier in 2011 than in 2010; with 18% and 16% stronger winds respectively. This again seems to boil down to the December months, with December 2010 seeing high pressure dominating across northern Europe, as opposed to the largely low-pressure which dominated 2011.
Across southern Europe however, winds were largely below average due to the dominance of high pressure in this area. It is noteworthy that December was much less windy across southern Europe as the deep low pressure systems didn’t extend their influence that far across Europe, although the Po Valley was notably closer to average than Andalucia owing to its more northerly position. There were however some windier spells, with most notable during the spring months of March, April and May. This also coincided with more settled spells, at least during March and April, across more northern areas. This was due to high pressure migrating to northern Europe, which in turn steered the low pressure areas to the south, leading to this reversal in the wind strengths in these areas.
Site-specific monthly average wind speeds:
The graphs (see below) compare the monthly average wind speeds during 2011 against the long-term average for five individual sites across the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. It has been generated by Virtual Met Mast TM, the Met Office’s site-specific wind analysis model-based tool
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