Coupling of a Mesoscale Atmospheric Prediction System with a CFD Microclimatic Model for Production Forecasting of Wind Farms in Complex Terrain: Test Case in the Island of Evia Yiannis G. Perivolaris, Anna N. Vougiouka, Vasilis V. Alafouzos, Dimitis G. Mourikis, Vaggelis P. Zagorakis, Kostas G. Rados£, Dimitra S. Barkouta

摘要: The present paper presents an effort towards the coupling of a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) mesoscale model with a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) microclimatic model. Use of NWP models is necessary to predict the spatial and temporal variability of the wind field over large wind farm areas of complex terrain. One such model is the Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) developed at the US Naval Research Laboratory. COAMPS is a three-dimensional non-hydrostatic model that has been used for operational forecasting since 1996 for a wide range of research purposes for both idealized as well as real data simulations. On the other hand, CFD calculations are performed by VANE, a tool properly adjusted for complex terrain topographies that has been applied in a number of wind energy studies in Hellas. For the present study, COAMPS is applied at horizontal resolution of 5km while coupling of the two models COAMPS-VANE is accomplished via a one-way interaction: COAMPS three-dimensional output provides the necessary boundary conditions of the microclimatic small-scale CFD model VANE. The coupling procedure is evaluated through inter-comparisons with available measurements in the island of Evia. Finally, future scientific efforts aiming to the operational use of this procedure are proposed.