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of WAsP: the roughness model, the flow model, the shelter model and the wind farm model. In general terms, accurate predictions using the WAsP program may be obtained (Bowen and Mortensen, 1996) provided: the reference site (meteorological station) and predicted site (wind turbine site or met. station) are subject to the same overall weather regime, the prevailing weather conditions are close to being neutrally stable, the reference wind data are reliable, the surrounding terrain (of both sites) is sufficiently gentle and smooth to ensure mostly attached flows, and the topographical model inputs are adequate and reliable.
Topographical analysis
Estimation of the wind resource ranges from overall estimates of the mean energy content of the wind over a large area called regional assessment to the prediction of the average yearly energy production of a specific wind turbine at a specific location called siting. The information necessary for siting generally needs to be much more detailed than in the case of regional assessment. However, both applications make use of the general concepts of topography analysis and regional wind climatology. In order for WAsP to calculate the effects of topography on the wind at a given place ("the site") it is necessary to describe systematically the characteristics of the surroundings. The site may be a projected wind turbine site or a met. station or wind mast. For a given situation, there are three main effects of topography on the wind: roughness, orographic and shelter effects. In nature these effects are not entirely independent. The program takes this into account, but allows the user to specify the close-by sheltering obstacles, the roughness of the surrounding terrain, and the orography independently. How these terrain characteristics are obtained and entered to WAsP is explained in the following.
Resource grid
Resource grids are collections of 'light-weight' turbine sites calculated in a batch, but here the sites are arranged in a regular grid covering an area. The extension of the grid and the grid cell size may be chosen to map the wind climate or wind resource anywhere in the map and with as much detail as is required. Resource grids can be masked in order to reduce calculation time.
Roughness rose
An alternative to providing roughness information in a map is to provide a site-specific, sector-wise description. Turbine sites and met. stations can both be associated with roughness descriptions (roses).
Meteorological station
A meteorological station (met. station for short) is used to calculate a wind atlas. It represents a data collection site located somewhere in an associated map. A met. station does not have any data except its location in the map and user-specified corrections. It is associated with a wind climate which has been observed at the station. It may be associated with a list of obstacles surrounding the station and a description of the roughness lengths of the surrounding area. A set of user corrections can be associated with a met. station. It provides a way of informing WAsP about some site-specific adjustments which cannot be described using the other hierarchy members.