Complementarity assessment of south Greenland katabatic flows and West Europe wind regimes

Highlights: • Wind resource assessment in Greenland and Western Europe. • Reanalysis and climate modelling data used for wind resource assessment. • Better and complementary wind in Greenland relative to Western Europe. • Potential of enhanced yields in Greenland with development of novel wind converters. -- Abstract: Current global environmental challenges require vigorous and diverse actions in the energy sector. One solution that has recently attracted interest consists in harnessing high-quality variable renewable energy resources in remote locations, while using transmission links to transport the power to end users. In this context, a comparison of western European and Greenland wind regimes is proposed. By leveraging a regional atmospheric model specifically designed to accurately capture polar phenomena, local climatic features of southern Greenland are identified to be particularly conducive to extensive renewable electricity generation from wind. A methodology to assess how connecting remote locations to major demand centres would benefit the latter from a resource availability standpoint is introduced and applied to the aforementioned Europe-Greenland case study, showing superior and complementary wind generation potential in the considered region of Greenland with respect to selected European sites.