Towards high resolution, validated and open global wind power assessments

Wind power is widely recognized as a key component of future net-zero energy systems. However, substantial variability among current wind resource and power simulations used for wind farm deployment limits the reliability of siting and system integration decisions. Therefore, we present a transparent, open source, validated and evaluated, global wind power simulation workflow for the renewable energy simulation tool ETHOS.RESKit. As the first wind simulation workflow using the new Global Wind Atlas 4 and the fifth iteration of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis, it is capable of simulating time-resolved energy output of wind turbines with high spatial resolution and customizable designs for both onshore and offshore wind turbines. The tool has undergone an extensive validation and calibration process using over 18 million global measurements from meteorological masts for wind speed bias correction and 8 million measurements from wind turbine sites across 6 countries during 2002 to 2021. In comparison with measured energy yield from wind turbine sites, we achieve a global average capacity factor mean error of 5.6% and Pearson correlation of 0.844. In addition, we evaluate its performance against annually aggregated energy production data from operational wind farms and country-level wind power generation statistics reported by energy agencies, demonstrating its accuracy across multiple spatial and temporal scales with a mean error of only 0.6%. Additionally, a final calibration step ensures alignment of the simulation with real world statistics. The release of ETHOS.RESKit is a step towards a fully open source and open data approach to accurate wind power modeling by incorporating comprehensive simulation advances in one model.