Long Term Variation Trend of Wind and its Impact Upon Wind Power Generation in Taiwan

Wind power generation has been viewed as a promising renewable energy to meet challenge of climate change. However, wind power is susceptible to climate change because previous investigation shows there are declining trends of the land surface wind speeds over middle and lower latitudes. Since long term variation trends is notably different from inter-annual random variation and could have notable impact on wind farm from planning perspective, observed meteorological data of Taiwan is investigated to find out long term variation trends of wind speed and its impact on wind power generation. It is discovered that wind speed in majority of stations in west coast of Taiwan have ascending trends while that of all investigated stations in east coast have descending trends. Since east of Taiwan is not suitable for wind power development for its higher likelihood suffering Typhoons and most of established wind farm locate in west coast of Taiwan, it is speculated that long term variation trend of wind do not have notable negative impact on wind power generation in Taiwan.