Weather modelling Wind & Icing
For nearly 20 years Kjeller Vindteknikk has developed and used our own in house WRF simulations for different geographical areas and with various spatial resolutions.
The resultant data series may be used as reference data in the long-term correction of short-term wind measurements or potentially in early stage analysis of the wind in an area.
The data consists of time series of a number of different meteorological parameters modeled based on the model WRF (Weather Research and Forecast). WRF is a state-of-the-art mesoscale numerical weather prediction system, aiming at both operational forecasting and atmospheric research needs.
Wind and icing maps
Depending on the size of the area and the complexity of the terrain we use different simulations tools for calculating a wind and icing maps.
Kjeller has produced icing maps covering Finland (2016), Sweden (2012) and Norway (2009) and have made these freely available for download in pdf format here.
The icing maps are useful for early phase development for example when prospecting for sites, creating layouts and planning wind measurement campaigns, as well as initial assessments of potential production losses. The icing maps can be used as a first estimate of project specific icing severity. If wind farm specific icing hours exceed 50 h being in the range of IEA Ice Class 2-5, a more detailed icing loss assessment with the IceLoss 2 model is highly recommended.
The local icing model, which is developed by Kjeller Vindteknikk, is based on the ISO-standard “Atmospheric Icing of Structures” (ISO12494). Comparisons with measurements of icing in Sweden and Norway shows that the model well describes the periods of icing.