The finalisation of the Wind Atlas for South Africa (WASA) Project for the Western Cape and parts of the Northern and Eastern Cape marks an important milestone in South Africa’s renewable energy efforts.

WASA’s primary objective is to develop and produce numerical wind atlas methods and develop capacity to enable planning of large-scale exploitation of wind power in South Africa. This includes dedicated wind resource assessment and siting tools for planning purposes, i.e. a Numerical Wind Atlas and database for South Africa.

The project was born out of the South African Wind Energy Programme and Global Environment Facility (GEF) with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) support. WASA is implemented as a research and capacity building project with SANEDI as the Executing Agency and the Implementation partners: CSIR, SAWS, UCT (CSAG) and DTU Wind Energy (Denmark).

Why a wind atlas?

Wind constitutes the most critical environmental loading affecting structural design of the built environment in South Africa.  Furthermore, information on extreme winds is essential in the design of wind farms situated in areas with relatively strong winds.

Developing WASA

The wind atlas is being achieved through six work packages including physical wind measurements that are being used to gauge and verify modelling and the application thereof with tools, guides and databases.
Work that has already been done on the wind atlas includes:

• three years of high quality wind measurements by October 2013 with a data recovery above 90% for all ten WASA wind measurement masts
• launch of the first Large Scale High Resolution (250 m) Wind Resource Map by the Minister of Energy on 31 July 2013. The WASA high resolution Wind Resource map offers the following important cost and time saving benefits for planners, policy makers, Eskom and industry
• development of an updated and enhanced Numerical Wind Atlas NWA based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model
• development of an updated and enhanced High Resolution Wind Resource Map based on the WRF NWA and more accurate topography input data
• development of a 1:50-year wind speed and gust Extreme Wind Atlas.

Collaboration with Denmark

In 2013, the South African government, through the Department of Energy, signed an MOU with the government of Denmark for the implementation of renewable energy programme within which WASA phase 2 will be one of the deliverables. Denmark is making further financial support available in the expansion of phase 2 of WASA to cover the remaining areas of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Free State Provinces.

The implementation partners for WASA Phase 1 will continue the collaboration for the execution and implementation of phase 2.

The Ambassador of Denmark, René Dinesen said, “The cooperation between South Africa and Denmark in renewable energy is close and fruitful. It provides useful exchange and transfer of knowledge, skills, and technologies. With the successful completion of the first phase of the wind atlas in the Eastern and Western Cape I am confident the second phase being implemented over the next three years will assist developers, planners, and communities to identify optimal sites for wind farm development.”

WASA phase 2 expected to be completed in 2018.