WIND ENERGY MODELING OVER WEST AFRICA

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Graduate student, Dpt. of Environmental Science, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, Alabama, USA.

2 Professor, Dpt. of Environmental Science, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, Alabama, USA.

Abstract

ABSTRACT
Wind Energy remains one of the few bright spots in renewable energy in the 21st
Century. Wind farms can provide clean, renewable energy to homes, businesses
and the agricultural sector. Though Wind energy is the fastest growing component of
renewable energy sources, it is highly fluctuating in time and space due to the
intermittent nature of near-surface winds. Understanding of uncertainties in shortterm
prediction of wind energy is becoming increasingly important for a variety of
issues, such as integration into an electricity supply system, local energy balancing,
and management of energy resources. To overcome the shortfall of high resolution
in-situ regional wind observations for wind resources assessment in West Africa, the
wind conditions have been estimated utilizing the next-generation mesoscale
numerical weather prediction system, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)
Model. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of (WRF) Model in
wind prediction over two regions in West Africa. The present case study shows that
the model has performed reasonably well over Dakar, Senegal. On the other hand,
the model performance over Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso was unsatisfactory.

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