Abstract
Predictions of wind speed for six different near-shore sites were made using the NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) wind data. The distances between the NCAR sites and prediction sites were varied between 40km and 150km. A well-known wind energy prediction program, WindPRO, was used. The prediction results were compared with the measured data from the AWS(Automated Weather Stations). Although the NCAR wind data were located far away from the AWS sites, the prediction errors were within 9% for all the cases. In terms of sector-wise wind energy distributions, the predictions were fairly close to the measurements, and the error in predicting main wind direction was less than $30^{\circ}$. This proves that the NCAR wind data are very useful in roughly estimating wind energy in offshore or near-shore sites where offshore wind farm might be constructed in Korea.
