The wind industry has long recognized the technical value of mesoscale numerical weather prediction (“mesoscale modeling”) for wind energy resource assessment. Mesoscale models simulate all atmospheric processes that impact wind farm performance, including transient storm systems and weather fronts, land surface processes, boundary layer heating and turbulence, thermal flows, gravity waves, air-sea interaction, and clouds and precipitation.
For wind energy resource application purposes, when run with a grid of high spatial resolution (< 300 m, microscale, including as large-eddy simulation [LES] configuration) at sites with complex terrain, mesoscale models capture the vast majority of the full breadth of wind flow phenomena induced by the interaction of winds with the underlying terrain at scales relevant to wind energy.
