The impact of climate change on the wind energy resource of Suriname using Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations

Naresh Ramsingh, Riad Nurmohamed

The objective of this study was to analyze if wind energy would be efficient to use in Suriname, in order to generate power on utility scale. For this study three locations along the coast of Suriname were used: Nieuw Nickerie, Paramaribo and Galibi. The PRECIS regional model was used to do the dynamical down scaling and was also used to do correlation analysis with the available measurements. Two future time periods were used, the period of 2020-2050 and 2070-2100. The ERA40 and ECHAM4 data sets showed a correlation higher than 0.4 with the observed data set. ECHAM5 and Hadley had a very low correlation factor. Based on the ECHAM4 data, three SRES scenarios were available, namely ECHAM4 A2 (2020-2050), ECHAM4 A2 (2070-2100) and ECHAM4 B2 (2070-2100). These wind speed data were corrected and then synthesized on different heights with the simulation program Windographer. This program was also used to do power prediction on different heights and with different wind turbines. The results showed that for the period of 2020-2050, the ECHAM4 A2 (2020-2050) scenario had reasonable wind speeds that could generate power on utility scale with a CF that is in between 20 and 35%. The ECHAM4 A2 (2070-2100) and ECHAM4 B2 (2070-2100) scenarios were scenarios with very low wind power and CFs lower than 20%.