Complementarity Assessment of South Greenland Katabatic Flows and West Europe Wind Regimes

• Published in: Energy
• Main Authors: Radu, David-Constantin, Berger, Mathias, Fonteneau, Raphaël, Hardy, Simon, Fettweis, Xavier, Le Du, Marc, Panciatici, Patrick, Balea, Lucian, Ernst, Damien
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2019
• Subjects: wind energy; renewable resource assessment; remote renewable energy harvesting; Greenland; Engineering; computing & technology; Energy; Electrical & electronics engineering; Ingénierie; informatique & technologie; Energie; Ingénierie électrique & électronique
• Online Access: https://orbi.uliege.be/handle/2268/230016; https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/230016/1/katabatic.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2019.03.048

peer reviewed Current global environmental challenges require vigorous and diverse actions in the energy sector. One solution that has recently attracted interest consists in harnessing high-quality variable renewable energy resources in remote locations, while using transmission links to transport the power to end users. In this context, a comparison of western European and Greenland wind regimes is proposed. By leveraging a regional atmospheric model specifically designed to accurately capture polar phenomena, local climatic features of southern Greenland are identified to be particularly conducive to extensive renewable electricity generation from wind. A methodology to assess how connecting remote locations to major demand centres would benefit the latter from a resource availability standpoint is introduced and applied to the aforementioned Europe-Greenland case study, showing superior and complementary wind generation potential in the considered region of Greenland with respect to selected European sites.