WIND RESOURCE ASSESSMENT OF ERITREA, AFRICA - PRELIMINARY-RESULTS ANDSTATUS

We describe the approach for, and results of, a pre-feasibility assess ment for wind resource development in the recently independent African nation of Eritrea [1]. Sharp regional distinctions in landform and me teorology, in addition to relatively scant historical wind data, precl ude a comprehensive assessment based on existing data, motivating a re gional approach to the assessment using a diversity of techniques. Our approach combines remote sensing, simplified meteorological modeling, analysis of historical measurements, biological indicators, and short term spot-measurements to characterize promising wind sites. The south ern Red Sea coast is a rich wind resource. Long term Red Sea wind data from the comprehensive ocean-atmosphere data set (COADS) reveal that average annual wind speeds at 10 m along the lower 200 km of coastline are from 6 to 7.5 m/s. The United States Air Force Environmental Tech nical Applications Center's (USAFTEC's) DATSAV hourly surface wind dat a for Aseb indicate annual mean wind speeds of 9 m/s for one site, wit h average winds above 11 m/s during the winter monsoons from October t hrough April. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.