A comparison of intra- and extraeuropean options for an energy supply with wind power

Europe currently has by far the highest installed wind power capacity of all regions in the world. However, this is not due to Europe being the best possible place to build wind power, but rather to a favourable political climate. There are areas with high resources around Europe where harvesting of wind power could be economical, even including the costs of transport to Europe. One problem to be overcome is that wind energy by nature is a variable resource and cannot be scheduled like conventional power plants. However, the variability significantly decreases when the wind power is harvested from a large area. Already Europe itself shows big prospects for a smoothing of wind power output trough the distribution of generation. Using efficient transmission systems (such as high voltage direct current HVDC) to harvest wind power from areas outside Europe that have a very good wind resource is a viable option, even for large scale transfers of energy. This paper is to shed some light on the wind energy potentials in and around Europe, and the smoothing effects occurring due to the low correlation of wind farm output with distances of thousands of kilometres in between. (orig.)Available from: http://www.iset.uni-kassel.de / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman