Assessment of the renewable energy resources at a remote site

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to develop a methodology for assessing the wind and solar energy resource from short-term records. Five and a half months of hourly wind speed and solar radiation data from two sites at Tuamarina, Marlborough, in the South Island of New Zealand, were recorded and analysed. Blenheim Airport was chosen as the long-term reference station. Complex terrain, local thermotopography and the influence of the nearby sea complicated a prediction of wind speeds using Blenheim Airport as a reference station.

Four simple wind speed and two solar energy prediction models based on hourly correlation relationships were investigated. Models based on hourly average data provided the best prediction results. The effect of the length of the monitoring period on prediction accuracy was investigated to determine the minimum recording time for wind and solar energy predictions. It was found that the lowest prediction errors were obtained only by using the entire data sets for a prediction.

First steps towards a design were introduced by assessing the wind and solar energy resources for the month with the lowest solar energy resource. This information could be used to outline a renewable energy design in the future.