Impact of Climate Change on Wind Energy Generation in Kagbeni, Nepal using RegCM

Abstract

Renewable energies, the promising technologies for the mitigation of climate change, are strongly climate dependent. This research was done to study the impact of climate change on energy generation from wind resources in Kagbeni, Nepal, where the present wind speed and wind power density at 75 m agl are 8.15 m/s and 851 W/m² respectively.

In this research, RegCM-4.4.1 regional climate model was used to downscale the future wind resources with a resolution of 10 km x 10 km. The model was validated in the region using five year observed wind resources from 2001-2005 and further it was used to downscale the wind resources for time period of 2030-2050 using HadGEM2 GCM output of scenario RCP 4.5.

This research predicts a 5.3% increase in the wind speed with 13.4% increase in the wind power density at 75 m agl for the time period of 2030-2050. The turbine selected was SUZLON S-52 having hub height of 75 m with 600 KW power rating. The capacity factor of the turbine for the time period of 2030-2050 increases by 15% compared to base year 2001-2005.