After a succession of
recent reports on climate change, almost everyone agrees that cleaner
forms of energy to power the global economy are a good idea. Few
would disagree that renewable energy sources such as the wind and sun
are desirable options to this cleaner energy path.
Knowledge is Literally
Power
Indeed, solar, wind,
geothermal, biomass, hydro and wave resources have the potential to
meet several times the world’s present and future energy demands.
The catch is that these resources are not evenly distributed, and can
vary greatly within even small geographic regions.
Quantifying the renewable
energy resources of a region is necessary before they can be
harnessed. Without timely and reliable assessments of the size and
scale of a particular renewable energy resource, investors cannot
determine whether a project will be viable, especially their
potential return on investment.
High quality assessments
of renewable energy resources also allow national and state energy
agencies to establish long-term and scientifically robust sustainable
energy options and policies, including plans and policies by
environmental agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
High quality assessments
of renewable energy resources also allow national and state energy
agencies to establish long-term and scientifically robust sustainable
energy options and policies, including plans and policies by
environmental agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In the past, assessments
of wind energy meant prospecting for initial sites through local
geographical knowledge (such as ridge lines with vegetation affected
by wind) and then placing anemometers on tall masts for months or
years at a time. This was not only expensive, it also meant the data
could only be used for a small region, as other sites even a few
hundred metres away could have very different wind patterns.
Collecting solar data was a little easier due to its more uniform
nature in a limited area.
Most developed
countries have meteorological institutions that carry out at least
some of these functions, as well as utilities and other institutions
that can help industry at least get started to develop renewable
energy projects. This was the case in California during the 1980s
when the state government funded a wind monitoring programme and put
the results in the public domain, which kick started the wind energy
industry there.
Developing countries,
however, are generally not so fortunate. Weak national institutions
and the lack of resources means the potential to expand their
economies with clean energy is severely restricted.
Innovative Support Enter SWERA, the
Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment project. SWERA was launched
in 2001 as a collaboration between 25 international institutions to
develop the information tools needed to stimulate renewable energy
projects. SWERA initially focused on major areas of thirteen
developing countries across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and
Asia, and was supported by the Global Environment Facility
(GEF), with additional support by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), and the US National Aeronautic and Space
Administration (NASA).
Fig. 1 - Investments into renewable
energy projects need high quality resource data at different levels
of project implementation. Resource atlases are used for finding the
best sites for renewable energy projects. Maps of annual and monthly
averages are suitable in developing small projects. Larger multi
megawatt installations need more detailed data, such as hourly time
series for solar energy or detailed wind statistics for large wind
parks. These data go into the engineering process to model and
optimize energy yields. Finding the best sites and getting an optimal
design increases the yield of the project and lowers final energy
costs.
“It struck us from the
very beginning that countries need good information about their
resources for sensible renewable energy policies in government and on
the investment side,” said Mark Radka, chief of the Energy Branch
in UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics that
oversees SWERA.
Radka added that SWERA
took the “critical first step” for creating indigenous renewable
enterprises by producing maps of each country’s solar and wind
resources. Scientists at SWERA
institutions, however, added new satellite data to the available
terrestrial weather data. SWERA tapped the
wind energy expertise of the Risø National Laboratory at the
Technical University of Denmark and the solar expertise from the
German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Technical Thermodynamics.
SWERA also worked with country partners, local universities and
government technical institutes to develop the assessments.
To produce solar maps,
scientists used weather satellite imagery to infer a country’s
resource. Wind maps were produced from high-resolution imagery and
high-quality numerical models of wind flow over complex terrain. Creating maps with
sufficient quality to be used for large-scale renewable energy
applications was a principle SWERA goal, but another important
accomplishment was creating a standard product from a range of
institutions and techniques, combining solar and wind data from many
different measuring instruments and techniques.
Part of the reason SWERA
appealed to UNEP, said Radka, was that it gave the organization “a
chance to bring together different schools of thought on using
satellite-derived information collected mainly for weather purposes,
and come up with a consistent way of using it, even if the satellite
datasets are different.”
SWERA programme
manager at UNEP, Daniel Puig, said the assessments were “eye-opening”
for developing countries that didn’t have this information before,
and is helping to accelerate and broaden interest in renewable energy
in SWERA countries. One of SWERA’s
strengths is making solar and wind data compatible with geographic
information systems (GIS). This innovation by the US National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) arranged digital maps, satellite
images, aerial photography, and other data representing an area's
attributes and characteristics into layers for GIS applications.
“GIS really helps
organize the SWERA data,” said Tom Hamlin who overseas the
technical aspects of SWERA. A SWERA analysis can tell users, for
example, how many square kilometers of a region have a certain
profile of wind strengths within a certain distance from transmission
lines, roads and populated areas. From a project development
perspective, this information is highly valuable and helps project
developers gain confidence their projects will be successful and
profitable.
Datasets are coming in
from Morocco and Tunisia, for example, and from work done by NREL in
the Philippines and the Dominican Republic under funding from the US
Agency for International Development.
“This combination
of renewable energy resource maps and data in print quality
documents, online mapping, and standalone analysis forms a powerful
decision
support system for a broad range of
clients, including energy planners and developers, policy makers,
industry representatives, and investors,” says Hamlin.
The GIS work by
SWERA has been integrated into a stand-alone, interactive application
called the Geospatial Toolkit (GsT) customized for each
country. The GsT has
been tested and developed for use on the Windows 2000 and XP
operating systems and can be downloaded from the SWERA website
(http://swera.net). Toolkits have been created for 10 countries and 2
provinces.
Results SWERA has produced a range
of solar and wind datasets and maps at better resolution than
previously available. The renewable energy information provided
through SWERA includes:
SWERA has supported
informed decision-making and helped increase investor confidence in
renewable energy projects. In Nicaragua, for example, project results
prompted the Nicaraguan National Assembly to pass the 2004 Decree
on Promotion of Wind Energy. SWERA efforts have often discovered
more renewable energy potential than previously thought. An
assessment for China, for example, found the country’s renewable
energy potential was 50% greater than earlier estimates.
Puig said that one
of SWERA's strengths is the placement of critical solar and wind
energy resource maps and data in the public domain. The SWERA archive
is housed at the US Geological Survey’s Earth Resources and
Observation Science Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, along
with the GsT and other computer-based tools.
Expanding SWERA Although the 13-nation
pilot project ended in 2006, the SWERA program continues and is
expanding geographically and adding data on geothermal and
small-scale hydropower energy. Biomass resources may also be added in
the future if funding can be found from governments, international
financial institutions, users and others.
The expanded SWERA
programme aims for an open architecture to include new countries and
partners. UNEP is engaging development aid agencies, investors, and
developers, in a combined effort to integrate renewable energy
resource assessments into energy and development planning processes,
as well as communicating to financiers the profitable investment
opportunities offered by renewable energy projects.
“We’re branching out
into other countries,” Puig said, “and going into some places
where assessments have been conducted and the information exists, but
the information needs to be organized and formatted it before
entering the SWERA archive, even if it might not have been done under
the original project.”
Datasets are coming in
from Morocco and Tunisia, for example, and from work done by NREL in
the Philippines and the Dominican Republic under funding from the US
Agency for International Development.
As
part of its geographic expansion, SWERA is also involved in a $15
billion effort announced in January by the government of Abu Dhabi in
the United Arab Emirates to fund renewable energy infrastructure and
related projects in that country, the Middle East/North Africa region
and globally. SWERA is mapping solar and wind energy resources in
several countries of the Middle East and North Africa, including an
assessment for a 100-megawatt solar concentrating system for
electricity production and desalination.
Puig said SWERA
helps to remove a major barrier for developing countries -
understanding whether they have the resources to support a renewable
energy initiative. “And it turns out that very often they have more
renewable energy resources than they think they do.”
This article is presented by the Energy Branch, Division of
Technology, Industry and Economics, United Nations
Environment Programme - Paris, France.
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After a succession of
recent reports on climate change, almost everyone agrees that cleaner
forms of energy to power the global economy are a good idea. Few
would disagree that renewable energy sources such as the wind and sun
are desirable options to this cleaner energy path.
