Question# 9:

Site selection for wind turbine requires consideration of a comprehensive set of factors
and balancing of multiple objectives in determining the suitability of a particular area for a
defined land use. The selection of suitable project areas involves a complex array of
critical factors drawing from physical, demographical, economic, policies, and
environmental disciplines.

Following shows major factors involved in selecting the sites:
Wind Conditions
Naturally, the most important condition for a wind turbine site is the presence of regular
and considerable wind current. Wind is an intermittent resource, meaning that wind
speeds inevitably change throughout the day and due to different weather conditions, but a
good site should have fairly reliable conditions of good wind speed and a nearly constant
minimum supply of wind energy. During site selection, wind speeds are usually
monitored over long periods of time to measure consistency and at different altitudes to
identify the most favorable altitude for a turbine in the area.
Wind Obstacles
The presence of tall or large obstacles on a site, such as buildings, rock formations or
trees, can disturb currents from the prevailing wind and dissipate wind energy. As a
general rule, an ideal wind site has a significant clearance around it, with few or no
obstacles between the prevailing wind direction and the turbine. The effectiveness of
coastal wind farms, for instance, is largely based on the complete lack of obstacles for the
prevailing wind on the ocean surface. In the case of a site with a few obstacles, the turbine
should be placed as far as possible from the obstacles and at a height well over the tallest
obstacle to avoid disturbed wind currents.

Grid Connection
In general, the longer an electrical link between a power source and its destination, the
more energy is lost moving the current. This phenomenon is known as line loss and is
another factor for consideration when selecting a wind turbine site. A site can have ideal
ground and wind conditions but be so far from the grid or a power load that connecting it
would both be quite expensive and involve the loss of considerable amounts of energy in
the line.
Other Factors
A wind turbine is a large piece of machinery with rapidly moving parts. As such,
installing a wind turbine may not be appropriate for every site, no matter how much clean
renewable energy it could produce on that site. The scenic and functional quality of areas
with historical protection designations or public recreational grounds, for instance, may be
diminished by the presence of wind turbines. Areas with large groups of migratory birds
or man-made objects flying at the elevation of a wind turbine blade may also raise serious
safety concerns. Even in a domestic installation, placing the turbine away from areas that
receive a lot of traffic or contain fragile constructions is always a good safety measure.

Based on these factors, The proposed sites for installing wind generation are as follows:

1. On-Shore (Rawdat Ben Habbas Villages).

In this location the annual hourly wind speed is measured at 20, 30, and 40 meters
above ground level (AGL). Where other meteorological parameters like ambient
temperature, pressure, relative humidity and global solar radiation were measured at 2
meters AGL. The annual mean wind speed at this location was founded 4.6, 5.23 and 5.57
rn/s at 20, 30, 40 meters AGL, respectively which are considered to be an acceptable
speeds for economic operation for wind generation[1].


2. Off-Shore (Yanbu).

This city is located at the western coast of Saudi Arabia. From economic point it is
worthy to install wind turbines there. The study in [2] concludes installing wind farm with
a capacity of 1500, 1000, and 600 kW will reduce the greenhouse effect by 31369, 23601,
and 26087 tons in each year respectively. The wind speed at this location has been
measured for 14 years at the height of 6 meters above the sea level. Where the average
wind speed is found to be 5.1 m/s. The wind power plant capacity factor is obtained as the
ratio of the average power produced by the plant over a year to its rated power capacity.
The main conclusion depending on the study in [2] is this site economically and
environmentally feasible to build off-shore wind power plant. In the reported study many
factors have been considered when wind power plant is going to deliver actual power to
the main grid such as the effect of various losses like array and wake losses, airfoil
soiling/icing losses, downtime losses, and miscellaneous losses.









b) Based on the annual average wind speed of your chosen location, what is the
anticipated energy production for one wind turbine in one year at that location (1 page)?

The output power from the wind turbine can be calculated as in follow
relation:

(1)
Where A is the swept area of the turbine as shown in the following figure.


Where

(2)
Where r is the turbine radius in m, is the air density in (

), and
represents the wind speed.
Air density can be calculated as follow:

(3)
Where
P = the surface pressure (Pa), R = the specific gas constant for air (287
J/kgK); and T = the air temperature in degrees Kelvin (C+273).
Depending on the above relations the average power output in (MW)
from any wind turbine installed in the selected locations can be calculated as
well as the annual energy produced by the installed turbine in (MWh).

In selected locations if the capacity factor for each wind turbine is assumed to
equal 33.5% and the rated power output for each wind turbine is 1 MW the
annual production from this wind turbine will be equal to:

MWh

c) If you now had a 100 turbines what would the capacity factor be for one year (1/2
page)?

The wind power plant capacity factor is obtained as the ratio of the average
power produced by the plant over a year to its rated power capacity [2].
Assuming that each turbine is rated at 1 MW, then the power produced by 100
turbines in one year is obtained as

The plant capacity factor can be obtained as

d) Given the various different configurations or topologies of generators, which
configuration would you choose and why (2 pages)?





[1] S. Rehman, M. Mahbub Alam, J. P. Meyer, and L. M. Al-Hadhrami, "Feasibility study of a windpvdiesel hybrid
power system for a village," Renewable Energy, vol. 38, pp. 258-268, 2012.
[2] S. Rehman, "Prospects of wind farm development in Saudi Arabia," Renewable energy, vol. 30, pp. 447-463, 2005.