WAsP .map Compatibility

Nick,

It would be very nice if OpenWind could import WAsP .map roughness and terrain files. Many other programs (e.x. WindFarmer, Windsim, etc.) accept WAsP .map files. Because of this universality, we typically build roughness maps in WAsP.

We like to run multiple climate / wake models using different software as a kind of QA check. It would be nice if we could use OpenWind in this process, but for now, because it cannot accept the same terrain / roughness maps that we use in the other programs we only use OpenWind sparingly.


Thanks,
Adam

Good to hear from you Adam,

OpenWind takes terrain contours from .MAP files. I can extract gridded roughness from them too but it will just some work. First, can you explain to me please how WindFarmer uses the roughness from a MAP file? When I originally wrote WindFarmer, there was no capability for it to read or use the roughness info from the MAP file and I don't quite see how GH would use the roughness to affect their wake calculations. So far as I am aware, WindFarmer has no wind-flow model and uses direct inputs of roughness as parameters in its wake models rather than calculating the upwind roughness from a MAP file. But times change and I could easily be out of date.

Also, could you maybe tell me a little more about the "climate" calculations you refer to? The more I know, the more I can help.

Nick

Thank you for the quick reply Nick.

Ah yes, I think I may have been mistaken when I mentioned WindFarmer. It does import roughness and displays it on the screen but does not incorporate it into the calculations IIRC. I should have mentioned WAsP, instead. Both WAsP and Windsim accept .map files as inputs to create climate models.

By climate models I simply mean wind resource models, as in wind resource grid (WRG) files, etc.

One more thing: could you please opine on how OpenWind takes contour info from .map files? I haven't been able to get OpenWind to accept .map files of any data.

Thanks again.


Regards,
Adam Hanna

It is also possible to convert .map files to more convinient formats (such as .shp) by using SAGA GIS.

By using the command line capacity of saga, you could do a simple batch script so that you can do a right click "send to" for easy operation.