Wind Resource Map to boost renewable energy efforts

(Image: GCIS)

This as the country's renewable energy efforts reached another important milestone with the launch of the country's first Large Scale High Resolution (250m) Wind Resource Map yesterday.

This map can contribute significantly to fast tracking the development of wind farms as well as to improve government's access to accurate and verified information on the country's wind resources.

The department today officially made available to the public the wind resource map, generated from the Wind Atlas for South Africa (WASA) project for further research, development and planning purposes. The Wind Resource Map currently covers the Western Cape and parts of the Eastern and Northern Cape provinces.

The data is based on the Verified Numerical WASA, which was launched in March 2012. It includes important information such as ground surface terrain effects that determine the local wind climate and in turn, can be used for the identification of high-yielding wind development zones; and the estimation of available wind energy and capacity which can be utilised by prospective wind farm developers of all sizes in their planning process.

Important benefits

The Wind Resource Map offers important benefits for planners, policy makers and industry. These benefits include cost and timing savings as the viability, in terms of wind speed, of a potential site can be predicted with known and traceable accuracy, while it also levels the playing field between small or large industry players to identify and develop project sites for wind farms.

It will also assist government in calculating the potential yield of the wind energy resources among others.

The Large Scale High Resolution Wind Resource Map will now be available to the public from the WASA's online portal http://wasadata.csir.co.za/wasa1/WASAData.

"We expect this new data to serve as an all-important tool in enabling developers to fast-track their own efforts in developing wind farm projects," said Martins.

Ambassador René Dinesen, whose country had contributed to the project, said: "The Embassy of Denmark is confident that this latest release of high resolution data will further assist the IPPs [Independent Power Producers] and the South African authorities with more accurate information, which is of high value for the further planning of the roll out of wind energy projects in South Africa. This data can ensure that the most highly productive project sites in terms of wind speed are identified."

The purpose of the WASA is to improve knowledge and quality of resource assessment methods and tools, to make available this knowledge and tools free of charge for planning and development of wind farms and off-grid electrification, and lastly, to build capacity of local institutions to do wind resource measurements.