Abstract of Thesis presented at COPPE/UFRJ as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (M.Sc.)

Development of Tools for Wind Modelling for Energy Production

Ricardo Zely Figueiredo de Carvalho

January/2011

Advisor:

Luiz Pereira Calôba

Department:

Eletrical Engineering

      This work aims to develop tools for improving the correlation of wind data between measuring stations, contributing to solve some of the main challenges for the utilization of wind energy.
      There are several methods that address these problems, each one with its own limitations. Therefore, this subject-matter has great room for advances and improvements.
      Two different approaches were developed. At first we tried to incorporate some
      aspects of the dynamics of the winds, in order to consider the distances between stations as well as direction and wind speed. In the second part, the tools directly correlate the seasonal behavior of each station, without regarding any specific hypothesis.
      For the first approach results showed that for nearby stations it would be possible to develop tools benefitting from information obtained from the phenomenology of the wind. For distant stations these information would be of little use.
      In the second approach the results showed that it is possible to significantly improve the correlations, especially in cases where the classic correlations are low. It was possible to develop a tool that improved about 4%.