Wind Energy Ressources in Saxony: An Experimental Approach

In 1991 a special programme was initiated by the Saxonian Environmental Ministry to estimate the wind energy potential in Saxony and to identify sites for economic operation of wind energy converters.
In the frame of the programme 16 wind measuring stations were erected, more concentrated in orographically complicated regions. The wind speed was measured at two heights between 10 m and 36 m a. g. l. Ten-minutes-averaging-values of wind velocity and direction were registrated over a time of minimally one year.
The danish Wind-Atlas Program WASP was applied to calculate wind atlas librariers from the measured wind datas. The atlas library represents the regional wind climate of the measuring station. Because WASP was developed mainly for coast and lowland regions far from mountains, special efforts were necessary to estimate the region of representance in Saxony. It could be shown, that in lowland regions the area of representance regions in some cases was comparable with WASP results from coast regions. Especially in the mountain region of the "Erzgebirge" the representance regions was found to be very small. By means of atlas libraries the wind power density in the northern part of Saxony was calculated.

On the basis of these investigations the wind energy potential of Saxony could be estimated. Totally 500 usable sites were identified with an average number of 5 500-kW-wind turbines at each site. Using these capacity a yearly energy production of 2200 GWh seems to be possible.