Combining Re-Analyzed Climate Data and Landcover Products to Assess the Temporal Complementarity of Wind and Solar Resources in Iraq

Considering the spatial–temporal variation of renewable energy (RE) resources, assessment of their complementarity is of great significance for decision-makers to increase the stability of power output and reduce the need for storage systems. In this regard, the current paper presents a roadmap to assess the temporal complementarity patterns between wind and solar resources for the first time in Iraq. A new approach based on re-analyzed climate data, Landcover products, and geographical information system (GIS) is proposed. As such, renewable resource datasets are collected for 759 locations with a daily timescale over five years. Landcover classes are translated into wind shear coefficients (WSCs) to model wind velocity at turbine hub height. Then, the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) is applied to calculate the complementarity indices for each month of the year. Results of this investigation reveal that there are significant synergy patterns spanning more than six months in the southwestern regions and some eastern parts of Iraq. The highest complementarity is observed in March and December with a value of −0.70 and −0.63, respectively. Despite this promising potential, no typical temporal complementarity has been discovered that would completely eliminate the fluctuations of clean power generation. However, the synergistic properties yielded by this work could mitigate the reliance on storage systems, particularly as they cover important regions of the country. The proposed approach and tools can help improve the planning of renewable energy systems.