Costa, Paula SilvaMiranda, PedroEstanqueiro, Ana2013-08-052013-08-052006Costa, Paulo; Miranda, Pedro; Estanqueiro, Ana. Development and validation of the Portuguese wind atlas. In: Proceedings of the European Wind Energy Conference 2006, Athens, Greece, 27 February-2 March, 2006, 9 p.http://hdl.handle.net/10400.9/1955A methodology to construct a wind potential atlas for mainland Portugal is presented. A long term simulation with the popular MM5 mesoscale weather model was made with a whole year of reanalysis data (1999 year) in order to compute a mean wind annual cycle. Results were corrected by an intra annual variability factor and compared with four reference wind masts monitored by INETI for 12 years for validation purposes. The results obtained in this work are expected to present the wind energy developers a first estimate of the wind potential in mainland Portugal. Other useful applications can also be considered such as Tourism, territory planning and management, among others.engMesoscale modelsWind resourceWind atlasconference object