• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.1-9
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• 2007

Sensitivity analysis of wind resource micrositing has been performed through the application case at the Antarctic King Sejong station with the most representative micrositing softwares: WAsP, WindSim and Meteodyn WT. The wind data obtained from two met-masts separated 625m were applied as a climatology input condition of micro-scale wind mapping. A tower shading effect on the met-mast installed 20m apart from the warehouse has been assessed by the CFD software Fluent and confirmed a negligible influence on wind speed measurement. Theoretically, micro-scale wind maps generated by the two met-data located within the same wind system and strongly correlated meteor-statistically should be identical if nothing influenced on wind prediction but orography. They, however, show discrepancies due to nonlinear effects induced by surrounding complex terrain. From the comparison of sensitivity analysis, Meteodyn WT employing 1-equation turbulence model showed 68% higher RMSE error of wind speed prediction than that of WindSim using the ${\kappa}-{\epsilon}$ turbulence model, while a linear-theoretical model WAsP showed 21% higher error. Consequently, the CFD model WindSim would predict wind field over complex terrain more reliable and less sensitive to climatology input data than other micrositing models. The auto-validation method proposed in this paper and the evaluation result of the micrositing softwares would be anticipated a good reference of wind resource assessments in complex terrain.