COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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LEADVILLE - 7/3/2003 through 7/24/2004

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 39° 14.9340’ or N 39° 14’ 56”
Longitude:
W 106° 14.3526’ or W 106° 14’ 21”
Township:
9 S
Range:
79 W
Section:
20
Elevation (ft.):
11,570
Tower Type:
NRG Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
20 m (65.6 ft)
Vane Offset (deg):
+347°
Direction Basis:
Unknown
Site Number:
0662
Wind Explorer S/N:
0662

DATA DETAILS

July 3, 2003 through July 24, 2004:

The anemometer tower was installed on July 3, 2003. The site was located approximately 2.5 miles east of Leadville and 0.5 miles south of Evans Gulch. The tower was located on a ridge that rises to the south-southeast. Evergreen trees sparsely populate the ridge and range in height from 10 to 20 feet tall. The site had good exposure to the wind in all directions except to the south and southeast, which is fair.

All data was collected using an NRG #40 Anemometer and NRG #200 Wind Vane mounted on a tilt-up tower located on the landowner's property at a height of 20m. This equipment fed into an NRG Wind Explorer data logger. All data plugs were sent into the Governor's Energy Office and then to the University of North Dakota for analysis. All data plug files and text versions of these files are given below.

Raw Wind Data Files
NRG Data_Plug Files
Txt Files
Leadville_2003_0662_0701_0904.A03 Leadville_2003_0662_0701_0904.txt
Leadville_2003_0662_0904_1009.A03 Leadville_2003_0662_0904_1009.txt
Leadville_2003_0662_1009_1128.A03 Leadville_2003_0662_1009_1128.txt
Leadville_2003_0662_1128_0201.A03 Leadville_2003_0662_1128_0201.txt
Leadville_2004_0662_0201_0424.A04 Leadville_2004_0662_0201_0424.txt
Leadville_2004_0662_0424_0724.A04 Leadville_2004_0662_0424_0724.txt
Leadville_2004_0662_0724_0805.A04 Leadville_2004_0662_0724_0805.txt

Note that not all data plug files were available from UND for this site. It is important to note that these are the raw files without any compensation for offset. It is also important to note that the temperature was not recorded during this period.

For this data, UND applied an offset of +347° to the wind vane data. The corrected data and wind resource summary report are available here:

CSU was chosen as the contractor for the program on September 14, 2007. From the UND data, an analysis of the wind resource was developed using Windographer 1.13. For this data, an offset of +9° was already applied by UND to the wind vane data. No data quality analysis was performed for this data other than what was available from the flag data fields included in the data. The suspect data was first removed from the collected data. Windographer was then used to add in synthetic data to these intervals with suspect data. The Windographer files (with blanks for the suspect data and with the blanks filled with synthetic data) are given below:

Complete Wind Resource Summary

The anemometer tower was removed from the site on July 24, 2004. Highlights of the wind resource at this site for the entire data collection period using the Windographer for the data adjusted for data quality and offset by +347° are shown below:

Data Properties
Variable
Data Set Starts:
6/12/2003 13:30
Height above ground (m)
20
Data Set Ends:
8/5/2004 05:50
Mean wind speed (mph)
10.09
Data Set Duration:
14 months
Median wind speed (mph)
9.12
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Min wind speed (mph)
0.00
Elevation (ft.):
11,570
Max wind speed (mph)
73.15
Mean air density (kg/m³):
0.860
Mean power density (W/m²)
115
Wind Power Coefficients
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
1,010
Power Density at 50m:
188 W/m²
Energy pattern factor
2.919
Wind Power Class:
1 (Poor)
Weibull k
1.288
Wind Shear Coefficients
Weibull c (mph)
10.87
Power Law Exponent:
0.177
1-hr autocorrelation coefficient
0.795
Surface Roughness:
0.01 m
Diurnal pattern strength
0.430
Roughness Class:
2.00
Hour of peak wind speed
15
Roughness Description:
Few trees
Mean turbulence intensity
0.302
Note: The wind power density and wind power class at 50m are projections of the data from 20m. A surface roughness of 0.1 meters was assumed for this projection. This is equal to terrain with a few trees. This value was then used this to calculate the roughness class and the power law exponent shown above.
Standard deviation (mph)
7.37
Coefficient of variation (%)
73.1
Frequency of calms (%)
5.17
Possible records
60,434
Valid records
58,340
Missing records
2,094
Data recovery rate (%)
96.5

 

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, allowing for losses of about 13%. 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.

Turbine
Rotor
Diameter
meters
Rotor
Power
kW
Hub
Height
meters
Hub
Height
Wind
Speed
mph
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
20
10.09
42.83
1.50
0.95
8,300
12.7
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
20
10.09
30.34
0.52
1.01
8,900
10.1
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
20
10.09
17.56
2.12
0.14
1,300
14.4
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
20
10.09
38.48
0
0.26
2,200
14.3
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
20
10.09
42.81
1.77
0.48
4,200
15.9
Northern Power NW 100/20
20
100
25
10.41
48.11
0
8.63
75,600
8.60
Vestas V47 - 660 kW
47
660
65
11.90
37.12
0.23
96.3
844,000
14.6
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
80.5
12.26
41.50
2.11
196
1,714,200
13.0
Vestas V80 - 2.0 MW
80
2,000
100
12.64
40.50
0.91
328
2,874,200
16.4
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
110
12.81
34.92
2.76
465
4,077,300
18.6

 


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