Preliminary Assessment of Remote Wind Sites

Abstract

Wind energy is becoming a reliable and affordable source of clean energy and is rapidly expanding to remote places around the world. A crucial input for wind farming prospect is the assessment of potential wind sites. Sites, especially remotely located, often do not have a wind resource map and thus lack credible historical records of wind resources. Measurement campaigns to map these sites are costly and time consuming. In this paper, a method for preliminary wind resource assessment for remote sites is proposed. The method is a combination of interpolation and extrapolation of data from the surrounding sites to the potential wind farm site. Two interpolation techniques, viz., Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) and Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN), are applied to the data set recorded by Sonic Detection and Ranging (SODAR) in West Texas, USA with the surrounding sites within 300 km radius of the potential site. Extrapolation is done by using a power law with the exponent equal to 1/7. The resulting values of the wind speeds are validated with the available 200 m meteorological tower measurements at the potential site in Reese, Lubbock West-Texas, USA. Root mean square error (RMSE) of daily averages of wind speed ranged from 1.5 to 3 meters per seconds.