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During the late 1980's the
entire geographical area covered by the OS Grid in the UK (Great
Britain and Northern
Ireland) was wind modelled on a computer for three different heights; 10m,
25m and 45m.
The annual average windspeeds are only indicative and there are
inevitable differences within the 1km square due to topography and
obstructions. However it will give a good first estimate of whether a
wind turbine is going to be viable and worth investigating further,
usually requiring a windspeed of 6 m/sec or more.
This is old software and is not very user-friendly, the most difficult
item being the finding of the OS Northings and Eastings required. This
is not the same as the map reference on an OS map.
It is worthwhile getting this right and a useful check is to input
a site reference that you know will have an effect on windspeed,
usually a remote hilltop. Just North of Wind and Sun HQ is Clee Hill,
a not very high (533m) but steep ridge rising within a km.
Clee Hill would have a map reference of 596 779 usually. However
the full reference is 359600E
277900N
(roughly!)The point we need is the bottom left corner of the km
square of interest, so the coarser resolution reduces the OS reference
to 359E 277N. The number inserted before the usual twin three figure
map references (shown in yellow above) is printed as a small subscript
in the corner of the map.
The km grid output centred on Clee Hill outputs as:
| 7.3 |
8.1 |
7.3 |
| 7.1 |
8.8 |
8.7 |
| 7.4 |
8.6 |
8.7 |
Annual mean windspeed (m/sec) for km
squares around 359 277
Picking a similar feature in your location shows the level of
speed-up that hills can produce and also gives confidence that the
Easting/Northing numbers are being properly input.
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