Wind energy mapping of coastal zones by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for siting potential windmill locations

• Published in: International journal of remote sensing Vol. 21; no. 9; pp. 1781 - 1786
• Main Authors: JOHANNESSEN, O. M, BJORGO, E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Taylor and Francis 01-06-2000
• Subjects: Applied geophysics; Earth sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; Internal geophysics; Norway; Scandinavia; synthetic aperture radar; wind energy; cartography; Europe; Space remote sensing; coastal environment
• ISSN: 0143-1161; 1366-5901
• DOI: 10.1080/014311600209733

The Earth's population is facing an increasing demand for electrical power. After the Kyoto meeting which gave clear signals of reductions in the CO sub(2) emission to the atmosphere it is clear that new alternative sources of power must be considered to meet those needs. In this context it has been focused on possibilities for increasing the utilization of converting wind energy into electrical power by use of wind mills. With the technical improvement of wind power turbines in recent years, operating wind power-plants have become more economically efficient, and is today a worthy source for complementing other types of energy. In planning for wind mill park installations it is of fundamental importance to have sufficient information about the wind characteristics for different seasons. Standard wind measurements are available from ground mounted instruments, such as cup- or sonic anemometers which usually provides time series of averaged 1 or 10 minutes intervals. Such measurements are very local and will not properly resolve the spatial variations in the wind field and it is thus generally difficult to estimate wind conditions at a nearby site. Since surface wind fields have large spatial variations, mapping of the wind field with high spatial resolution is of great importance for wind mill siting. The method of mapping wind energy in coastal zones for potential wind power plant location using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) derived wind speed, as suggested for the first time by Johannessen et al. (1998) is illustrated. The SAR instrument has clear advantages for high spatial resolution wind field mapping since it penetrates clouds and is not dependent on sun illumination of the remotely sensed objects. The SAR instruments onboard European Space Agency (ESA) ERS-1&2 and the Canadian RADARSAT have sufficient spatial resolution, 30 m and 10 m respectively, as well as 100 km (ERS-1&2) and 500 km (RADARSAT) wide spatial coverage along the coastline.