Getting Started with WAsP 9
Niels G. Mortensen, Duncan N. Heathfield, Lisbeth Myllerup,
Lars Landberg and Ole Rathmann
Risø-I-2571(EN)
Risø National Laboratory
Technical University of Denmark
Roskilde, Denmark
June 2007
Author: Niels G. Mortensen, Duncan N. Heathfield, Lisbeth
Myllerup, Lars Landberg and Ole Rathmann
Title: Getting Started with WAsP 9
Department: Wind Energy
Abstract (max. 2000 char.):
The Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP) is
a PC-program for horizontal and vertical extrapolation of
wind data. The program contains a complete set of models to
calculate the effects on the wind of sheltering obstacles,
surface roughness changes and terrain height variations. The
analysis part consists of a transformation of an observed wind
climate (speed and direction distributions) to a wind atlas data
set. The wind atlas data set can subsequently be applied for
estimation of the wind climate and wind power potential, as
well as for siting of specific wind turbines. The WAsP 9 Help
Facility includes a Quick Start Tutorial, a User's Guide and a
Technical Reference. It further includes brief descriptions of
and links to the Observed Wind Climate Wizard, the WAsP
Climate Analyst tool, the WAsP Map Editor tool, the WAsP
Turbine Editor tool, the Air Density Calculator and various
scripting tools.
This report consists of edited excerpts from the electronic
version of the WAsP 9 help facility:
Mortensen, N.G., D.N. Heathfield, L. Myllerup, L. Landberg
and O. Rathmann (2007). Wind Atlas Analysis and
Application Program: WAsP 9 Help Facility. Risø National
Laboratory, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde,
Denmark. 353 topics. ISBN 978-87-550-3607-9.
Printed in Denmark by Schultz Grafisk, 2007
Risø-I-2571(EN)
June 2007
Contract no.:
n/a
Groups own reg. no.:
1130 600-1
Sponsorship:
n/a
Cover:
Wind turbines close to Viscaria,
Kiruna, Sweden.
Photo by Gunnar Britse,
www.Windpowerphotos.com
Pages: 70
Tables: 0
References: 0
Information Service Department
Risø National Laboratory
Technical University of Denmark
P.O. Box 49
DK-4000 Roskilde
Denmark
Telephone +45 46774004
bibl@risoe.dk
Fax +45 46774013
www.risoe.dk
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1
Welcome ............................................................................................................................ 1
What is WAsP? ................................................................................................................... 1
The installation disk ............................................................................................................ 3
System requirements.......................................................................................................... 3
Installing WAsP 9 ............................................................................................................... 3
Upgrading from WAsP version 8 ........................................................................................... 4
Installation as an administrator ............................................................................................ 4
A note for WAsP Engineering users ....................................................................................... 4
WAsP 9 licencing................................................................................................................ 4
Installing the WAsP licence .................................................................................................. 4
Setting up dongle licencing on multiple computers.................................................................. 7
Problems which you might encounter .................................................................................... 7
Getting started... ................................................................................................................ 8
Keeping your installation up to date...................................................................................... 8
Trademarks and copyrights.................................................................................................. 8
What's new in WAsP 9?...................................................................................................... 8
System requirement changes............................................................................................... 8
New hierarchy member types............................................................................................... 8
Calculation behaviour.......................................................................................................... 9
Wind farms........................................................................................................................ 9
Resource grids ................................................................................................................... 9
Miscellaneous................................................................................................................... 10
Known issues ................................................................................................................... 10
Copyright and trademarks................................................................................................ 11
License Agreement........................................................................................................... 11
Copyright ........................................................................................................................ 11
License ........................................................................................................................... 11
i
Getting Started with WAsP 9
Confidentiality.................................................................................................................. 11
Distribution...................................................................................................................... 11
Limited warranty .............................................................................................................. 11
Limited liability................................................................................................................. 11
Applicable law .................................................................................................................. 12
Disputes.......................................................................................................................... 12
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 12
WASP HELP FACILITY ......................................................................................................... 13
The WAsP help facility...................................................................................................... 13
WebHelp ......................................................................................................................... 13
Context-sensitive help ..................................................................................................... 13
Complete on-line documentation...................................................................................... 14
Plan for future editions .................................................................................................... 14
Bibliographical reference ................................................................................................. 15
QUICK START TUTORIAL ..................................................................................................... 17
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 17
The GUI essentials ........................................................................................................... 17
Just the basics... .............................................................................................................. 17
Opening a new WAsP workspace ........................................................................................ 17
Working with the workspace hierarchy ................................................................................ 18
Saving the workspace and members ................................................................................... 21
A step-by-step example ................................................................................................... 22
Introduction..................................................................................................................... 22
The situation.................................................................................................................... 22
Working with WAsP to provide a prediction .......................................................................... 23
Calculating the wind atlas.................................................................................................. 23
Estimating wind power ...................................................................................................... 26
Estimating wind farm production ........................................................................................ 29
Mapping the wind resource ................................................................................................ 32
There's a lot more to learn... ............................................................................................ 37
ii
Table of Contents
Sample data and workspaces ........................................................................................... 38
Sample workspace #1: Waspdale ....................................................................................... 38
Sample workspace #2: Windfarm....................................................................................... 39
Sample workspace #3: ResourceGrid.................................................................................. 39
WASP USER'S GUIDE........................................................................................................... 41
The WAsP user interface .................................................................................................. 41
Overview of the WAsP user interface................................................................................... 41
Use the right-hand mouse button! ...................................................................................... 41
Menu and toolbars ............................................................................................................ 42
WAsP workspaces............................................................................................................. 43
Working with workspaces .................................................................................................. 43
The workspace hierarchy ................................................................................................. 45
About the workspace hierarchy .......................................................................................... 45
What is a hierarchy member? ............................................................................................ 45
Introducing the hierarchy members .................................................................................... 46
Modelling with the hierarchy members ................................................................................ 48
Patterns of association ...................................................................................................... 49
Legitimate parent-child associations ................................................................................... 52
Associated members have the same number of sectors ......................................................... 53
Working with the hierarchy.............................................................................................. 54
Hierarchy members' methods............................................................................................. 54
Inserting members ........................................................................................................... 54
Moving members.............................................................................................................. 55
Removing members.......................................................................................................... 56
Saving members .............................................................................................................. 56
Members' properties ......................................................................................................... 56
Refreshing the workspace hierarchy display ......................................................................... 56
Function keys................................................................................................................... 57
Carrying on… ................................................................................................................... 57
MODELLING WITH WASP .................................................................................................... 59
iii
Getting Started with WAsP 9
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 59
Read on… ......................................................................................................................... 59
FEEDBACK AND SUPPORT.................................................................................................... 61
Reporting problems.......................................................................................................... 61
Don't hesitate .................................................................................................................. 61
Before you contact us… ..................................................................................................... 61
Reporting problems .......................................................................................................... 61
Making suggestions.......................................................................................................... 62
Contacting the WAsP team ............................................................................................... 62
OTHER INFORMATION SOURCES ......................................................................................... 63
Risø readings in wind power meteorology........................................................................ 63
Wind power meteorology in general .................................................................................... 63
Wind measurements ......................................................................................................... 63
WAsP and wind modelling .................................................................................................. 63
Wind atlases .................................................................................................................... 64
Short term prediction........................................................................................................ 64
On the Web ...................................................................................................................... 64
Wind atlases, wind data and wind characteristics.................................................................. 64
Topographical and elevation data ....................................................................................... 65
Wind turbine and rotor blade manufacturers ........................................................................ 65
WASP FORMS ...................................................................................................................... 66
iv
Introduction
Welcome
In 1987 the Wind Energy and Atmospheric Physics Department at Risø National Laboratory introduced
WAsP – a powerful tool for wind data analysis, wind atlas generation, wind climate estimation, wind
farm power production calculations and siting of wind turbines. Over the years, the program has
become the industry standard for wind resource assessment and siting of wind turbines and wind
farms and it has been employed in more than 100 countries around the world.
A new release of this indispensable tool for everybody working with wind energy is now available –
WAsP 9 for Windows 2000, XP and Vista. The program has been developed by the same team who
worked out the Danish Windatlas, the European Wind Atlas, the Wind Atlases for Egypt and previous
versions of the WAsP programs.
The algorithms at the heart of the WAsP software have been tested and applied for more than 20
years in many different parts of the world. As time has passed, most of our efforts have been devoted
to refining the WAsP algorithms and supporting the existing software. Meanwhile, user interface
design standards have moved on. Many users (and prospective users) have indicated their desire for
an updated user interface. WAsP for Windows was intended to meet these demands.
WAsP is 100% 32-bit Windows software, which runs under Windows 2000, XP and higher. It conforms
to standard Windows software user-interface conventions, making it easy to learn and easy to use.
We recommend that you work through the Quick Start Tutorial – to see for yourself what WAsP 9 is all
about. If you're already familiar with a previous version of WAsP, you may read here about the new
features of version 9.
As it says in the License Agreement and Copyright Statement, the WAsP software is provided 'as is'
and 'does not represent a commitment on the part of Risø National Laboratory' etc. However, we are
of course aware that the programs may contain errors, programming bugs and inconsistencies –
especially with the introduction of this major upgrade. Therefore, we guarantee that we will do our
best to check, maintain and correct the programs in the WAsP package, and that we'll make available
or distribute corrected versions to registered users of the software.
We wish you the best of luck with your wind projects and hope WAsP 9 can help you reach your goals.
The WAsP Team @ Risø
What is WAsP?
WAsP is a PC-program for the vertical and horizontal extrapolation of wind climate statistics. It
contains several models to describe the wind flow over different terrains and close to sheltering
obstacles. Conceptually, WAsP consists of five main calculation blocks:
Analysis of raw data. This option enables an analysis of any time-series of wind measurements to
provide a statistical summary of the observed, site-specific wind climate. This part is implemented in
separate software tools: the Observed Wind Climate (OWC) Wizard and the WAsP Climate Analyst.
Generation of wind atlas data. Analyzed wind data can be converted into a regional wind climate or
wind atlas data set. In a wind atlas data set the wind observations have been 'cleaned' with respect to
site-specific conditions. The wind atlas data sets are site-independent and the wind distributions have
been reduced to some standard conditions.
Wind climate estimation. Using a wind atlas data set calculated by WAsP or one obtained from
another source – e.g. the European Wind Atlas – the program can estimate the wind climate at any
specific point by performing the inverse calculation as is used to generate a wind atlas. By introducing
descriptions of the terrain around the predicted site, the models can predict the actual, expected wind
climate at this site.
Estimation of wind power potential. The total energy content of the mean wind is calculated by
WAsP. Furthermore, an estimate of the actual, annual mean energy production of a wind turbine can
be obtained by providing WAsP with the power curve of the wind turbine in question.
1
Getting Started with WAsP 9
Calculation of wind farm production. Given the thrust coefficient curve of the wind turbine and the
wind farm layout, WAsP can finally estimate the wake losses for each turbine in a farm and thereby
the net annual energy production of each wind turbine and of the entire farm, i.e. the gross
production minus the wake losses.
The program thus contains analysis and application parts, which may be summarised as follows:
Analysis
time-series of wind speed and direction —> observed wind climate (OWC)
observed wind climate + met. station site description —> regional wind climate (RWC, wind
atlas data sets)
Application
regional wind climate + site description —> predicted wind climate (PWC)
predicted wind climate + power curve —> annual energy production (AEP) of wind turbine
Wind farm production
predicted wind climates + WTG characteristics —> gross annual energy production of wind farm
predicted wind climates + WTG characteristics + wind farm layout —> wind farm wake losses
gross annual energy productions + wake losses —> net annual energy production of wind farm
The WAsP models and the wind atlas methodology are
described in more detail in the European Wind Atlas.
The figure to the right is a schematic presentation of the
wind atlas methodology of WAsP.
In the analysis part (up arrow), the meteorological models
are used to calculate the regional wind climatology from the
raw or observed wind data.
In the reverse process — the application of wind atlas data
(down arrow) — the wind climate at any specific site may be
calculated from the regional climatology (Troen and
Petersen, 1989).
In general terms, accurate predictions using the WAsP
program may be obtained (Bowen and Mortensen, 1996)
provided:
the reference site (meteorological station) and
predicted site (wind turbine site or met. station) are
subject to the same overall weather regime,
the prevailing weather conditions are close to being
neutrally stable,
the reference wind data are reliable,
the surrounding terrain (of both sites) is sufficiently
gentle and smooth to ensure mostly attached flows, and
the topographical model inputs are adequate and
reliable.
•
•
•
•
•
2