In this activity, the feasibility study was carried out for the update of the Italian Wind Atlas, developed by RSE in 2002 in collaboration with the University of Genoa. In Italy, a significant growth of wind energy is expected in the coming years, in accordance with the objectives set for 2030 by the integrated National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP). The goal of this activity is to produce an updated database with the best tools available to the international scientific community in the field of meteorological modeling. For this purpose, the main wind atlases produced at national and international level regarding the Italian territory were analyzed, and a survey was carried out in collaboration with the Italian Wind Energy Association (ANEV) to acknowledge the actual interest of the operators in the sector towards a new version of the Atlas.

The Wind Atlas data were compared both with the currently most advanced analogous product, namely the New European Wind Atlas (NEWA), and with those of the MEteorological Reanalysis Italian DAtaset (MERIDA) developed by RSE. The analysis confirmed the need to develop a competitive and innovative product. The added value of the new product would mainly materialize in an increased spatial resolution of the meteorological model and in the assimilation, in the model simulations, of experimental anemometric data homogeneously distributed over the Italian territory.

For the creation of the new Wind Atlas, a scientific collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, recognized worldwide as an excellence in the field of research applied to atmospheric sciences, has been evaluated. This solution would have the advantage of making more computing resources available to the project and exploiting additional technical-scientific skills, giving overall greater relevance to the work. The most innovative aspect of the new Wind Atlas would be the combination of high-resolution meteorological modeling with the Analog Ensemble statistical technique, used so far in RSE for applications related to the forecasting of production from renewable sources and electricity demand, for the generation of 30 years of anemological data over the whole of Italy with a 1-km spatial resolution.

As for the solar source, during the activity a series of maintenance and development operations of the sunRiSE portal continued, aimed at speeding up its consultation.