Characterization of the wind power resource in Europe and its intermittency

Wind power is assessed over Europe, with a special care given to the quantification of intermittency. Using the methodology developed in Gunturu and Schlosser, the MERRA boundary flux data was used to compute wind power density profiles over Europe. Besides of the analysis of capacity factor, other metrics have been designed to further quantify the availability and reliability of this resource and the extent to which wind-power intermittency is coincident across Europe. The presented analysis leads to the conclusion that wind-proponents’ favourite statement, “wind always blows somewhere”, may not be so true.