Atmospheric wind characterisation for power generation

Abstract

In this dissertation, two exploratory studies on the statistical characterisation of atmospheric winds in the deep tropics are presented. The first is an investigation on the variance of the upper-air winds in a near-equator monsoon region using radiosonde data. An unconventional vector-tensor method was used that allows the directional characteristics of the variance to be quantified. It was found that the size and the anisotropy of the variance vary with height whereas the preferred axis of the variance tends to align with the direction of the mean wind. In the second study, the boundary-layer wind profile on an offshore island of Singapore was investigated. It was found that the observed wind profiles deviated characteristically from what can be predicted by using the traditional power-law wind profile model. Two alternative wind profile models were then proposed that gave better predictions. It was thus concluded that the tropical wind characteristics can deviate considerably from well-known established models.