Wind resources map of Iberian Peninsula using a mesoscale model: comparison of different methodologies

With an increasing number of wind farms planned in multiple locations without wind resource information, that comprise entire countries, there is a need for long term wind assessment, for both onshore and offshore wind resource potential. The focus of this work is to find the optimum methodology to build a wind map taking into account not only accuracy, but also the computational requirements. For this purpose six different wind resources maps have been calculated for Spain using a mesoscale model (SKIRON). The wind maps were calculated with different inputs and model configuration. An extensive validation was carried out using 24 meteorological station.