  Predictions of the solar wind at Earth are a central aspect of space weather
prediction. The outcome of such a prediction, however, is highly sensitive to
the method used for computing the magnetic field in the corona. We analyze the
impact of replacing the potential field coronal boundary conditions, as used in
operational space weather prediction tools, by non-potential conditions. For
this, we compare the predicted solar wind plasma parameters with observations
at 1 AU for two six-months intervals, one at solar maximum and one in the
descending phase of the current cycle. As a baseline, we compare with the
operational Wang-Sheeley-Arge model. We find that for solar maximum, the
non-potential coronal model and an adapted solar wind speed formula lead to the
best solar wind predictions in a statistical sense. For the descending phase,
the potential coronal model performs best. The Wang-Sheeley-Arge model
outperforms the others in predicting high speed enhancements and streamer
interactions. A better parameter fitting for the adapted wind speed formula is
expected to improve the performance of the non-potential model here.
