P88  Evaluation of WRF Microphysical Schemes for Use in    Forecasting Wind Turbine Icing

Davis, Neil, Andrea Hahmann, Niels-Erik Clausen, DTU Wind Energy, Roskilde, Denmark, and Mark Zagar, Vestas Technology R&D Aarhus, Denmark

Icing on wind turbines has been identified as a problem for placing turbines in cold climates. These problems include both health and safety risks due to ice throw, and increased economic risks due to uncertainty of power estimates and the potential for decreased machine lifetimes due to the additional loadings. The ability to forecast icing both near term and climatologically could aid in the quantification of these risks, thereby improving the risk management. The forecasting model we are developing relies on the accurate simulation of cloud amount, temperature and wind speed from a mesoscale model.  In this study, nine WRF simulations testing three microphysical schemes and three boundary layer schemes are evaluated over two European domains. The models are evaluated using satellite data, the meteorological observational network, and observations at 2 wind parks of interest. In addition to evaluating the model against measures of cloudiness, temperature and wind speed, the simulation results were used as input to an icing model,  which estimated ice amount and ice duration at the wind parks of interest, allowing us to evaluate these results against similar parameters from the wind parks themselves.