Present and future complementarity of wind power production in EU-28

International audiencethe amount of wind energy injected in the european electricity transmission system is expected to increase in next decades following the energy transition triggered by Directive 2009/28/eC.nevertheless, both absolute amounts and time patterns of wind electricity supply are different in each european country because of non-homogeneous meteorological conditions, europe being large enough to span several different climatic areas.indeed, different types of weather are often simultaneously present in different areas of the continent, and any planned pan-european electricity transmission grid aimed at dispatching electricity production throughout the continent has to face the challenge of balancing in real time differently intermittent and strongly inhomogeneous resources such as the wind production is.in this study, the long term (90 years) on-shore potential wind power supply for european countries is simulated with a daily time resolution, on the basis of the wind fields provided for the period 1961-2050 by 12 regional climate models involved in the enseMBles model intercomparison project.thanks to this data base a long term view of the evolution of potential wind power deployment will be provided. in particular, the time complementarity of wind energy production originating from different countries will be analysed with a special attention to the implications that such a complementarity is expected to have for the needs for international electrical interconnections transporting electricity from high production areas to high demand areas