Sebastin Sancho Dobles San Jos, Costa Rica - 1971 Study program in Germany: Oldenburg PPRE 96/97 German

cooperation partners:

Lahmeyer International GmbH E-Mail: ge_265@lif.de Internet: www.lif.de

Recommended practices in wind speed measurements Nowadays whit the increasing amount of wind energy developments, mostly in Europe and some other industrialised countries, arises a strong demand for bankable wind measurement campaigns by independent expert companies. Projecting a wind park involves several constrains such as: environmental, administrative, bureaucracy, economical and technical. Out of these constraints the economic parameters will be those which will define whether a wind project as feasible or not. However, there are procedures to select a promising wind site. Concentrating in the technical aspects, a project developer should look firstly for sites where the wind conditions are promising e.g. yearly wind speeds above 6 m/s and sites free of restricted areas. Nevertheless, just the fact to meet these requirements does not mean that the wind project will be environmentally and economically meaningful. Wind energy developments are subject of financial risk. The financial risk is, as well, a consequence of the uncertainties in the wind resource assessment which later will be amplified in the energy prediction due to the non linear connection between wind turbine output and wind speed. The combination of the uncertainties gives the total uncertainty in energy production which in some cases could vary between 3 and 30% or even more. In order to avoid financial disadvantages in a wind park development, the uncertainties must be minimised and risks carefully analysed. Technical uncertainties depend on the following subjects: Wind resource assessment Power curve performance Wind turbine availability

Commonly the wind resource assessment is carried out by the project developers wind expert, whereas the last two are responsibility of the wind turbine manufacturer or the wind farm operator.

Wind resource assessment

The process to assess the wind resource can be summarised in the following steps:

Wind measurement campaign Wind data validation and generation of wind statistics Terrain and roughness modelling Wind flow model calculation (Micro-siting) Measure-correlate Predict procedure (MCP) Yield estimation (WT power curve and wake model) A minimisation of the financial risk already starts in the early stages of planning by performing high quality wind measurements. Thus, in order to perform such measurements the following practices must be strictly followed: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Anemometers calibrated according to international standards Mounting according to the best recommended practices (IEA) Choice of measuring site. Representative of the wind farm. Measurement as close as possible to hub height Measurement period at least 12 months Data check and validation (Minimum acceptable data recovery 90%) MCP Wind flow model calculation (Micro-siting)

By minimising the uncertainties in points 1 to 8, one can achieve lower financial risk. The uncertainty in the energy production level will be a determinant parameter for risk management in wind farm planning. It must be kept in mind that in complex terrain the uncertainties must be increased and therefore on site wind measurements will be reliable within short distances around the measurement. Hence, the costs associated with high quality on site measurements (roughly 0,1% the investment costs) are rather low compared with the reduction in the financial risk. The energy yield estimation processes the results obtained during the measurement campaign (wind statistics) together with further input information like terrain model and wind turbine power curve. Since the wind measurement is the basis of any wind energy development, any uncertainty in the measurement will be amplified to the energy calculation level, therefore it must be noted that a high quality measurement will reduce the risk in the energy prognosis.