Investigation on the offshore wind energy potential over the north western Mediterranean sea in a regional climate system model

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing renewable energy resources worldwide. The estimation of the wind resources depends on the atmospheric circulation data retrieved from meteorological observations or regional climate models outputs. These models provide weather and climate data over specific domains and over time periods where few or no observations exist. In this work we evaluate the sensitivity of the offshore wind to the horizontal resolution of the regional climate model (WRF) and to the air-sea interactions over the north western Mediterranean sea. Comparisons between different model configurations allowed us to highlight the complexity of the interactions between the atmospheric circulation, the local topography and the sea surface. Results show that the simulated wind potential energy is very sensitive to the model configuration which can modify substantially its space-time variability.