Local wind speed forecasting based on WRF-HDWind coupling

Wind speed forecasts obtained by Numerical Weather Prediction models are limited for fine interpretation in heterogeneous terrain, in which different roughnesses and orographies occur. This limitation is derived from the use of low-resolution and grid-box averaged data. In this paper a dynamical downscaling method is presented to increase the local accuracy of wind speed forecasts. The proposed method divides the wind speed forecasting into two steps. In the first one, the mesoscale model WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) is used for getting wind speed forecasts at specific points of the study domain. On a second stage, these values are used for feeding the HDWind microscale model. HDWind is a local model that provides both a high-resolution wind field that covers the entire study domain and values of wind speed and direction at very located points. As an example of use of the proposed method, we calculate a high-resolution wind field in an urban-interface area from Badajoz, a South-West Spanish city located near the Portugal border. The results obtained are compared with the values read by a weathervane tower of the Spanish State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) in order to prove that the microscale model improves the forecasts obtained by the mesoscale model

AUTOMATIC ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF THE ROOF SURFACES FOR THE INSTALLATION OF SOLAR PANELS USING A MULTI-DATA SOURCE AND MULTI-SENSOR AERIAL PLATFORM

A low-cost multi-sensor aerial platform, aerial trike, equipped with visible and thermographic sensors is used for the acquisition of all the data needed for the automatic analysis and classification of roof surfaces regarding their suitability to harbour solar panels. The geometry of a georeferenced 3D point cloud generated from visible images using photogrammetric and computer vision algorithms, and the temperatures measured on thermographic images are decisive to evaluate the surfaces, slopes, orientations and the existence of obstacles. This way, large areas may be efficiently analysed obtaining as final result the optimal locations for the placement of solar panels as well as the required geometry of the supports for the installation of the panels in those roofs where geometry is not optimal