Complementarity assessment of south Greenland katabatic flows and West Europe wind regimes

• Main Authors: Radu, David, Berger, Mathias, Fonteneau, Raphaël, Hardy, Simon, Fettweis, Xavier, Le Du, Marc, Panciatici, Patrick, Balea, Lucian, Ernst, Damien
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: Greenland
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544219304529

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. Wind energy; Renewable resource assessment; Remote renewable energy harvesting; Greenland;