RSE’s Aeolian Atlas has long been a reference for stakeholders in the wind industry. Given the centrality of this source for achieving decarbonization goals and the availability of new meteorological models and measured station data, RSE has undertaken extensive work to radically update the Aeolian Atlas, starting with the construction of a new meteorological database, which was completed in 2021, and the subsequent development of new maps of average speed and producibility at various significant heights. During the current research year, work has focused on the development of a new WebGIS interface and the validation of the underlying anemological database.

The new WebGIS Italian Aeolian Atlas AEOLIAN, built using the open-source framework TerriaJS, provides summary maps of average wind speed (m/s) and specific annual producibility (MWh/MW), for an extended offshore domain, as well as for the onshore domain, and offers the possibility of downloading hourly time series of wind speed at different heights-50, 75, 100, 125, 150 m a.s.l.- within the 30-year simulation period; it also comes with an updated calculation module for performing technical-economic feasibility evaluations.

The validation of the new anemological database was carried out by comparing it with data from 104 experimental stations homogeneously distributed throughout the country. It was verified that AEOLIAN, compared to other similar products, provides a higher accuracy in complex terrain due to its high spatial resolution and its assimilation of experimental data (observational nudging).