Sensitivity analysis of wind energy resources with Bayesian non-Gaussian and nonstationary functional ANOVA

Abstract

The transition from nonrenewable to renewable energies represents a global societal challenge, and developing a sustainable energy portfolio is an especially daunting task for developing countries where little to no information is available regarding the abundance of renewable resources such as wind. Weather model simulations are key to obtain such information when observational data are scarce and sparse over a country as large and geographically diverse as Saudi Arabia. However, output from such models is uncertain, as it depends on inputs such as the parametrization of the physical processes and the spatial resolution of the simulated domain. In such situations a sensitivity analysis must be performed, and the input may have a spatially heterogeneous influence of wind. In this work we propose a latent Gaussian functional analysis of variance (ANOVA) model that relies on a nonstationary Gaussian Markov random field approximation of a continuous latent process. The proposed approach is able to capture the local sensitivity of Gaussian and non-Gaussian wind characteristics such as speed and threshold exceedances over a large simulation domain, and a continuous underlying process also allows us to assess the effect of different spatial resolutions. Our results indicate that: (1) the nonlocal planetary boundary layer scheme and high spatial resolution are both instrumental in capturing wind speed and energy (especially over complex mountainous terrain), and (2) the impact of planetary boundary layer scheme and resolution on Saudi Arabia’s planned wind farms is small (at most 1.4%). Thus, our results lend support for the construction of these wind farms in the next decade.