Yu, W., Benoit, R., Girard, C., Glazer, A., Lemarquis, D., Salmon, J.R., and Pinard, J.P.. Wind Energy Simulation Toolkit (WEST): A wind mapping system for use by the wind energy industry, submitted to Wind Engineering, July 22 2005

A state-of-art wind mapping system, The Wind Energy Simulation Toolkit (WEST), was developed in the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) for use by the wind energy industry. WEST is based on a statistical-dynamical downscaling approach: a statistical analysis of climate data to determine the basic atmospheric states, and a dynamic adaptation of each basic state to high resolution terrain and surface roughness by using mesoscale and microscale models. WEST is applied to the Gaspé region of Canada. The mesoscale model is run at 5 km resolution, while the microscale model at 200 m. The simulation results are evaluated with tower observations at a height of 40 meters above ground level. The under-estimation of wind speed is about 6% if only meso-component of WEST is used, and about 1% if both meso- and micro-components are used. The correlation coefficient is improved from 0.5 with meso-component alone to 0.7 with full WEST.