Maps of mesoscale wind variability over the North Sea region

Mesoscale wind fluctuations affect the operation of wind farms, particularly as the number of geographically concentrated wind farms in the North Sea increases (Akhmatov et al. 2007). The frequency and intensity of wind fluctuations could be considered as a new siting criterion, together with existing criteria such as the wind resource and proximity to grid connection points. We used the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to calculate the average wind variability over the North Sea for wind fluctuations with periods of 30 minutes to 8 hours. Modelled winds are saved every 10 minutes for a 1 year period. The model was run with a horizontal grid spacing of 2 km. The variability maps are created by integrating the average 24 hour spectra at every grid point over different time-scales.