Abstract

RICHMOND-NAVARRO, Gustavo; MURILLO-ZUMBADO, Gustavo; MARIN-GUILLEN, Frank  and  CASANOVA-TRETO, Pedro. Dynamic model of wind speed in a tropical forested landscape. Tecnología en Marcha [online]. 2022, vol.35, n.2, pp.3-15. ISSN 0379-3982.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18845/tm.v35i2.5465.

Costa Rica has established the development of renewable energy sources as part of the strategy to diminish the fossil fuel dependency. The utilization of wind as a source of energy is one of the alternatives. To maximize the use of wind is necessary to understand the windlandscape interaction, especially in a country where 52 % of the terrain is covered by forest. The aim of this paper is to find a dynamic model that describes the wind behaviour that considers the roughness length as a variable and not as a constant, as it is usually considered within the literature. A series of data obtained from two different weather stations are analysed. The weather stations are managed by two different institutions: Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (Costa Rica Institute of Technology) and Instituto Meteorológico Nacional (Costa Rica Institute of Meteorology). Both weather stations are located at the main campus of Costa Rica Institute of Technology and data were obtained at two heights above ground level: 1.5 meters and 10 meters. Eureqa software was used to find a correlation between the different weather variables and roughness length as for wind speed. Several expressions are obtained in various scenarios as well as a model for wind speed that replaces the classic roughness length constant value with a dynamic expression, being able to estimate the wind speed at the vertical axis with data from a measuring height near to the ground, avoiding the investment in high value equipment and the necessity of installing support structures of considerable scale.

Keywords : Wind speed; wind resource; roughness length; forested landscape; dynamic model.

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