6th International Conference Energy & Meteorology: Abstract Submission

Projections of wind energy resources in the Caribbean for the 21st century (648)

Xurxo Costoya 1 , Maite deCastro 1 , Fran Santos 1 , M.C. Sousa 2 , Moncho Gómez-Gesteira 1
  1. Environmental PHYsics LABoratory (EPHYSLAB), Facultade de Ciencias, Universidade de Vigo, Ourense, Spain, España
  2. CESAM – Department of Physics, University of Aveiro, Campus Universitário de Santiago, Aveiro, Portugal

The Caribbean has the best conditions for a significant wind energy development, which makes a good planning for the future renewable energy mix essential. The impact of climate change on Caribbean wind power has been analyzed by means of ensembles of CORDEX regional climate models (RCMs). The high percentage of overlap between the distribution functions of actual data and models shows the reliability of CORDEX RCMs to project wind data in the area for the rest of the 21st century.

Three periods of time were considered for analysis of changes in wind speed and power projected for the 21st century relative to the historical period: near, mid and far future. Overall, there was a consensus between the model projections that winds will increase for the Caribbean except in the Yucatán Basin, where a decrease was projected. Both positive and negative trends tended to intensify with time, being highest in the far future, when the maximum percentage of change will be about -6% in the Yucatán Basin and +8% in the rest of the Caribbean. Changes in wind and wind power were also analyzed at the seasonal scale for the three future periods. There is a consensus between models in the projected increment for the wet season over the entire region, except in the Yucatán Basin, regardless of the period being studied. On the other hand, only a small region in the Venezuela Basin showed a moderate wind increase during the dry season. As previously observed at the annual scale, changes tended to intensify in time, being highest in the far future when the maximum change of wind speed and power are projected to be around 4% and 10% respectively in the dry season, and 10% and 20% in the wet season.

The projected increment during the wet season is associated with changes in the extension of the NASH, which is projected to produce stronger geostrophic winds in the southeastern Caribbean. The moderate increase projected for the southeastern coast of the Caribbean during the dry season is associated with an increment of around 1°C difference between the air temperatures over the land and ocean, intensifying local easterly winds.