Wind Atlas for Egypt

The results of a comprehensive, 8-year wind resource assessment programme in Egypt are presented. The objective has been to provide reliable and accurate wind atlas data sets for evaluating the potential wind power output from large electricityproducing wind turbine installations. The regional wind climates of Egypt have been determined by two independent methods: a traditional wind atlas based on observations from more than 30 stations all over Egypt, and a numerical wind atlas based on long-term reanalysis data and a mesoscale model (KAMM). The mean absolute error comparing the two methods is about 10% for two large-scale KAMM domains covering all of Egypt, and typically about 5% for several smaller-scale regional domains. The numerical wind atlas covers all of Egypt, whereas the meteorological stations are concentrated in six regions. The Wind Atlas for Egypt represents a significant step forward in the application of the wind atlas methodology in Egypt. Not only does it provide a coherent and consistent overview of the wind energy resource over the entire land (and sea) area of Egypt, the results of the mesoscale modelling are further available in a database (numerical wind atlas) which may be employed directly for detailed wind resource assessments and siting of wind turbines and wind farms. Utilising this database together with elevation maps derived from the Space Shuttle Topography Mission and land-use maps constructed from satellite imagery, the wind resource and likely power production of a given wind farm can be estimated in a matter of hours – anywhere in Egypt. In addition to the very high wind resource in the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, the wind atlas has discovered a large region in the Western Desert with a fairly high resource – close to consumers and the electrical grid. The KAMM simulations seem to capture the main features of the wind climate of Egypt, but in regions where the horizontal wind gradients are large, the uncertainties are large as well and additional measurements are required. The results are now published in a Wind Atlas for Egypt.