COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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PADRONI - 12/30/2011 to 1/12/2013

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 40° 45.0828’ or N 40° 45’ 4.97"
Longitude:
W 103° 9.326’or W 103° 9’ 19.55"
Survey Meridian:
Colorado, Sixth Principal Meridian
Township:
9 N
Range:
52 W
Section:
15
Elevation:
1,239 m (4,065 ft)
Datum:
WGS 84
Tower Type:
Earth Turbines Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
34 m (112 ft)
Vane Offset (deg):
+111° (built into raw data)
Direction Basis:
Magnetic North
Mag. Declination:
7° 55' E, changing by 8' W/yr
Symphonie S/N:
3090203931
Site No.:
4003

CSU ALP Install Team: Andrew Costinett, Jacqueline Hess, Christian Knapp, and Mike Kostrzewa

DATA DETAILS

December 30, 2011 to January 12, 2013:

The anemometer tower was installed on December 30, 2011 and removed on January 12, 2013. The site was located in Logan County in a field on top of a large hill about 2 miles SSE of the town of Padroni. The terrain was a rough pasture, with good access to the wind from all directions except from the southeast, where a copse of trees and house/garage are located about 400 feet from the tower location.

Data was collected using three (3) NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometers and one (1) NRG #200P Wind Vane, as follows:

  • Anemometers
    1. 34 m (111 feet) on an NRG 60" standard boom
    2. 34 m (111 feet) on an NRG 60" standard boom
    3. 19.86 m (65.17 feet) on an NRG 60" standard boom
  • Wind Vane
    1. 34.8 m (114.2 feet) heading 166° on an NRG 60" standard boom with the null point facing toward the tower

There was also a temperature sensor at a height of 1.8 m (6 feet) on a 6" boom.

All sensors fed into an NRG Symphonie data logger. The certifications for the anemometers are as follows:

NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometers
Anem. No.
1
2
3
Height
34 m
34 m
20 m
Model No.
1900
1900
1900
Serial No.
1795-00183424
1795-00183426
1795-00183413
Calibration Date
9/28/11 6:51:10 p.m.
9/28/11 7:13:24 p.m.
9/28/11 4:27:09 p.m.
Slope
0.766 m/s per Hz
0.765 m/s per Hz
0.763 m/s per Hz
Offset
0.37 m/s
0.38 m/s
0.38 m/s

The data logger generated wind reports for each day. Using the Symphonie Data Retriever software, each day's data was complied into one large data file. A zipped file that contains all of the NRG data files and a text version of the aggregate data for all days are given below:

Raw Wind Data Files
NRG Data Plug Files
Padroni_4003_SDR_2011_1231_to_2013_0112.zip

It is important to note that these are the raw files include the offsets for the wind vanes so no compensation is required.

Experienced users may also wish to download the site file used to process the raw data with the Symphonie Data Retriever software. You can find the site file here.

From the collected data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed for entire data collection period using Windographer 2.4.6. Since the data set contains data for two or more wind speed sensors at different heights above the ground, Windographer considered the wind shear relationship between different wind speed sensors to extrapolate the data to different heights. A best fit using the power law profile was chosen to extrapolate the data.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed and the data was flagged for icing in two ways:

  1. Any wind speed data (from any anemometer) where the wind speed was less than 0.5 m/s at a temperature less than 0°C for 3 hours or more was flagged and ignored when calculating the wind resource statistics.
  2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 degrees at a temperature less than 0°C for 3 hours or more was flagged and ignored when calculating the wind resource statistics.

The summary report, the combined data files, and the Windographer files (with and without the data quality analysis) are given below:

Final Wind Resource Summary

Highlights of the final wind resource to date at this site are shown below:

Data Properties
Data Set Starts:
12/31/2011 0:00 MST
Data Set Ends:
1/12/2013 11:00
Data Set Duration:
12 months
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Elevation:
1,239 m (4,065 ft)
Mean air density (kg/m³):
1.071
Wind Power Coefficients
Power Density at 50m:
301 W/m²
Wind Power Class:
3 (Fair)
Wind Shear Coefficients
Power Law Exponent:
0.103
Surface Roughness:
0.00152 m
Roughness Class:
0.41
Roughness Description:
Snow surface (?)

 

Variable
Height above ground
A: 34m (111.5 ft.)
B: 34m (111.5 ft.)
20m (65.2 ft.)
10-min. Mean wind speed (m/s)
5.797 5.901 5.521
10-min Median wind speed (m/s)
5.22 5.22 4.89
10-min Standard deviation (m/s)
3.634 3.601 3.328
10-min Min. wind speed (m/s)
0.37 0.38 0.38
10-min Max wind speed (m/s)
27.96 27.66 26.68
Weibull k
1.618 1.717 1.756
Weibull c (m/s)
6.448 6.626 6.217
Mean power density (W/m²)
260 267 218
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
2,281 2,340 1,911
Mean turbulence intensity
0.161 0.158 0.159
Energy pattern factor
2.502 2.430 2.422
Possible records
54,498 54,498 54,498
Valid records
52,160 54,361 54,365
Missing records
2,338 137 133
Data recovery rate (%)
95.7 99.8 99.8

 

Vertical Wind Shear, Height (m) vs Mean Wind Speed (m/s)

 

Wind Frequency Rose at 35 meters

 

Wind Energy Rose at 35 meters

 

Daily Wind Speed Profile, Hourly Mean Wind Speed (m/s) vs. Hour of the Day

 

Seasonal Wind Speed Profile, Monthly Mean Wind Speed (m/s) vs. Month

 

Probability Distribution Function at 34m - Sensor A: Frequency (%) vs. Wind Speed

 

Probability Distribution Function at 34m - Sensor B: Frequency (%) vs. Wind Speed

 

Probability Distribution Function at 20m: Frequency (%) vs. Wind Speed

Windographer was used to match up the wind at this site with the performance curves of some common turbines of various sizes and various heights. The table below shows the results. For the larger turbines, the tower height was increased to account for the larger turbine blades - the wind resource was extrapolated to these higher heights. Keep in mind that the larger and the higher the turbine, the better the wind and the greater the output. But of course, as the tower heights and turbine sizes increase so does the cost.

Keep in mind too that listing a particular turbine doesn't imply an endorsement - not does it imply that installing a particular turbine model is feasible or recommended for a particular site. For consistency, the larger turbines are included even at sites that where they may not be practical so that one can compare the relative production of different sites.

Turbine
Rotor
Diameter
meters
Rotor
Power
kW
Hub
Height
meters
Hub
Height
Wind
Speed
m/s
Time
At
Zero
Output
percent
Time
At
Rated
Output
percent
Average
Net
Power
Output
kW
Average
Net
Energy
Output
kWh/yr
Average
Net
Capacity
Factor
%
Bergey Excel-R
6.7
7.5
34 5.83 22.3 4.5 1.7 15,300 23.3
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
34 5.83 10.8 3.1 2.0 17,400 19.8
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
34 5.83 3.7 7.0 0.3 2,400 26.9
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
34 5.83 20.3 0.0 0.5 4,300 27.2
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
34 5.83 22.0 5.7 0.9 7,600 28.8
Northern Power NW100 21m
21
100
37 5.95 19.0 0.0 20.9 183,200 20.9
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
64.7 6.47 24.5 5.3 310.4 2,719,400 20.7
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
75 6.63 18.3 5.9 687.4 6,021,600 27.5
GE 3.0s
90
3,000
70 6.55 26.0 2.2 537.2 4,705,800 17.9
Vestas V90 - 1.8 MW
90
1,800
80 6.70 18.2 6.3 561.9 4,922,400 31.2
Vestas V90 - 2.0 MW
90
2,000
80 6.70 18.2 6.2 594.4 5,206,700 29.7
Vestas V90 - 3.0 MW 109.4 dB(A)
90
3,000
80 6.70 16.6 1.7 691.1 6,053,600 23.0
Vestas V100 - 1.8 MW
100
1,800
80 6.70 17.3 7.4 644.1 5,642,200 35.8
Vestas V100 - 2.0 MW
100
2,000
80 6.70 17.5 2.3 661.8 5,797,700 33.1
Vestas V100 - 2.6 MW
100
2,600
75 6.63 17.2 2.9 718.8 6,296,300 27.6
Vestas V112 - 3.0 MW
112
3,075
84 6.75 17.8 6.4 959.4 8,404,400 31.2

IMPORTANT: No turbine losses are included in the power, energy, and capacity factor values in the table. Typically, turbine losses can be 5-20% to account for maintenance downtime, icing/soiling and losses from other turbines in a wind farm. Users wanting to be conservative in the performance projections should multiply the power, energy, and capacity values by (1- % losses) to account for these losses.


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Last updated: June 2009
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