Investigation of the resource characteristics, capacity factors and levelized cost of wind and solar power generation in the United Arab Emirates based on ERA-5 reanalysis

A technical and economic wind and solar energy assessment is conducted for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) land and exclusive economic zone to contribute an improved understanding of the potential local role of wind power as a supplemental power generation technology. The hourly surface solar irradiation, sky clearness, and wind speed and power density data at 100 m elevation from the latest fifth generation European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis v5 (ERA-5) database are analyzed over a 20-year period (2004[sbnd]2023). The most favorable wind conditions are found to be in the western and south-western regions of UAE land, where good solar conditions also exist. Based on criteria including resource quality, geographic and infrastructure constraints, candidate land-based sites for utility-scale renewable power development are identified. ERA-5 mean annual, diurnal and seasonal hourly wind speeds are assessed against other datasets and published data, and bias-corrected at selected land-based sites using the Global Wind Atlas (GWA). Hourly solar and wind energy generation is simulated for the two most recent annual data periods (2022, 2023). Using ERA-5 wind speeds bias-corrected using the GWA, wind capacity utilization factors of 29.4[sbnd]42.4 % are predicted using selected IEC class III turbine technology (100[sbnd]140 m hub heights), compared with 25.7[sbnd]26.1 % for bifacial solar PV technology. The levelized cost of on-shore wind electricity is estimated to be ∼2.1[sbnd]3.2 higher than for solar PV in the short-to-long-term, but would compete with the dominant nuclear and natural gas (with/without carbon capture) electricity generation mix of the country's future energy strategy.