Time scale dependence of wind speed patterns - implications for wind power site assessment

Characterizing properties of wind speed variability and their dependence on the temporal scale is important: from sub-second intervals (for the design and monitoring of wind turbines) to longer time scales – months, years (for the evaluation of the wind power potential). Wind speed data are usually reported as averages over time intervals of various length (minutes, days, months, etc). The research project presented in this paper addressed the following questions: What aspects of the wind pattern are changed, in what ways and to what extent, in the process of producing time-averaged values? What precautions should be considered when time-averaged values are used in the assessment of wind variability? What are the conditions to be fulfilled for a meaningful comparison of wind pattern characteristics obtained in distinct studies? Our research started from wind speed records sampled at 0.14 second intervals, which were averaged over increasingly longer time intervals. Variability evaluation was based on statistical moments, L-moments, and detrended fluctuation analysis. We present the change suffered by characteristics of temporal variability as a function of sampling rate and the averaging time interval. In particular, the height dependence of wind speed variability, which is of theoretical and practical importance, is shown to be progressively erased when averaging intervals are increased. The paper makes recommendations regarding the interpretation of wind pattern characteristics obtained at different sites as a function of sampling rate and time-averaging intervals.