Data efficient measure-correlate-predict approaches to wind resource assessment for small-scale wind energy

The feasibility of predicting the long-term wind resource at 22 UK sites using a measure-correlate-predict (MCP) approach based on just three months onsite wind speed measurements has been investigated. Three regression based techniques were compared in terms of their ability to predict the wind resource at a target site based on measurements at a nearby reference site. The accuracy of the predicted parameters of mean wind speed, mean wind power density, standard deviation of wind speeds and the Weibull shape factor was assessed, and their associated error distributions were investigated, using long-term measurements recorded over a period of 10 years. For each site, 120 wind resource predictions covering the entire data period were obtained using a sliding window approach to account for inter-annual and seasonal variations. Both the magnitude and sign of the prediction errors were found to be strongly dependent on the season used for onsite measurements. Averaged across 22 sites and all seasons, the best performing MCP approach resulted in mean absolute and percentage errors in the mean wind speed of 0.21ms and 4.8% respectively, and in the mean wind power density of 11Wm and 14%. The average errors were reduced to 3.6% in the mean wind speed and 10% in the mean wind power density when using the optimum season for onsite wind measurements. These values were shown to be a large improvement on the predictions obtained using an established semi-empirical model based on boundary layer scaling. The results indicate that the MCP approaches applied to very short onsite measurement periods have the potential to be a valuable addition to the wind resource assessment toolkit for small-scale wind developers

Scaling sustainability: Regulation and resilience in managerial responses to climate change

This paper introduces the special issue of the British Journal of Management on ‘Scaling Sustainability: Regulation and Resilience in Managerial Responses to Climate Change’, providing an overview of the key issues in scaling sustainability, comprising an analysis of the six papers in the special issue. We discuss the complex relationship between micro, meso and macro scales, in the context of organizations’, managers’ and consumers’ complicity in the creation and intensification of climate-changing conditions. In networking multiple sites into a ‘global’ scale, managers and organizations can lose sight of the situated, localized nature of the position from which they perform the global. We conclude that a key factor in the capacity and speed at which local actions can be scaled up is the connection of sustainability-related activities by intermediary organizations that can generate resonance between multiple sites through association or alliance, rather than imposing a single logic. Thus, more resilient approaches, which acknowledge the significance of the interconnection between scales, are required to effectively scale sustainability strategies upwards or downwards