FOUNTAIN
4/22/1995 through 1/08/1996
LOCATION DETAILS |
Latitude: |
N 38° 37' 16" |
Longitude: |
W 104° 42' 21" |
Township: |
16 S |
Range: |
65 W |
Section: |
30 |
Elevation (ft.): |
5,570 |
DATA DETAILS
April 22, 1995 through January 8, 1996:
A wind monitoring system was installed at the Ray D. Nixon Power Plant located 17 miles south of the city of Colorado Springs.
Note: The the measurement period at this site was less than one year
The collected data includes the following data fields:
- Wind speed, standard deviation of the wind speed, and data quality flag for three (3) anemometers at 40m height (Note: no details are available on orientation)
- Wind speed, standard deviation of the wind speed, and data quality flag for an anemometer at 60m height
- Wind direction, standard deviation of the wind direction, and data quality flag for a wind vane at 40m height
- Wind direction, standard deviation of the wind direction, and data quality flag for a wind vane at 60m height
- Temperature from a sensor mounted at a height of 3m
Wind speed data at 40 meters represent a combination of data from primary and redundant sensors.
Only a text data file is available from this site. You can find this file here.
The file includes suspect data and when that data occurs, the value is generally a negative number. There is also a flag filed that indicates these suspect data values. For a version of this wind data with blanks rather than negative numbers, you can download here.
CSU was chosen as the contractor for the program on September 14, 2007. Using the raw data from all data plugs for this site, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.21. 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:
Highlights of the wind resource analysis at this site are shown below:
Data Properties |
Data Set Starts: |
4/22/1995 00:00 |
Data Set Ends: |
1/09/1996 00:00 |
Data Set Duration: |
8.6 months |
Length of Time Step: |
10 minutes |
Calm threshold (mph): |
0 |
Wind Power Coefficients |
Power Density at 50m: |
177 W/m² |
Wind Power Class: |
1 (Poor) |
Wind Shear Coefficients |
Power Law Exponent: |
0.120 |
Surface Roughness: |
0.0119 m |
Roughness Class: |
0.82 |
Roughness Description: |
Rough pasture |
Variable |
WS60 |
WS40A |
WS40B |
WS40C |
Height above ground |
60 ft (196.9 ft) |
40 (131.2 ft) |
40 (131.2 ft) |
40 (131.2 ft) |
Mean wind speed (mph) |
11.7 |
11.35 |
11.00 |
11.07 |
Median wind speed (mph) |
10.08 |
9.86 |
9.63 |
9.63 |
Min wind speed (mph) |
0.9 |
0.9 |
0.9 |
0.9 |
Max wind speed (mph) |
64.51 |
65.63 |
63.17 |
61.15 |
Mean power density (W/m²) |
189 |
172 |
155 |
161 |
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr) |
1,660 |
1,511 |
1,357 |
1,408 |
Energy pattern factor |
2.68 |
2.67 |
2.64 |
2.68 |
Weibull k |
1.61 |
1.62 |
1.64 |
1.61 |
Weibull c (mph) |
13.09 |
12.72 |
12.34 |
12.40 |
1-hr autocorrelation coefficient |
0.77 |
0.75 |
0.75 |
0.76 |
Diurnal pattern strength |
0.22 |
0.24 |
0.24 |
0.22 |
Hour of peak wind speed |
17 |
16 |
16 |
16 |
Mean turbulence intensity |
0.19 |
0.2 |
0.21 |
0.21 |
Standard deviation (mph) |
7.67 |
7.39 |
7.09 |
7.25 |
Coefficient of variation (%) |
65.6 |
65.1 |
64.5 |
65.5 |
Frequency of calms (%) |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Possible records |
37,728 |
37,728 |
37,728 |
37,728 |
Valid records |
37,662 |
37,662 |
37,662 |
37,662 |
Missing records |
66 |
66 |
66 |
66 |
Data completeness (%) |
99.8 |
99.8 |
99.8 |
99.8 |
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 |
40 |
11.35 |
33.25 |
3.14 |
1.13 |
9,900 |
15.1 |
Bergey Excel-S |
6.7 |
10 |
40 |
11.35 |
16.87 |
1.79 |
1.27 |
11,100 |
12.7 |
Bergey XL.1 |
2.5 |
1 |
40 |
11.35 |
5.58 |
4.59 |
0.18 |
1,500 |
17.5 |
Southwest Skystream 3.7 |
3.7 |
1.8 |
40 |
11.35 |
29.09 |
0 |
0.31 |
2,700 |
17.4 |
Southwest Whisper 500 |
4.5 |
3 |
40 |
11.35 |
33.08 |
3.90 |
0.57 |
5,000 |
18.9 |
Northern Power NW 100/20 |
20 |
100 |
40 |
11.35 |
44.06 |
0 |
10 |
87,700 |
10.0 |
Vestas V47 - 660 kW |
47 |
660 |
65 |
11.78 |
30.64 |
0.52 |
87.1 |
763,300 |
13.2 |
GE 1.5s |
70.5 |
1,500 |
80.5 |
12.08 |
38.04 |
2.76 |
176 |
1,538,100 |
11.7 |
Vestas V80 - 2.0 MW |
80 |
2,000 |
100 |
12.40 |
36.89 |
1.52 |
296 |
2,590,300 |
14.8 |
GE 2.5xl |
100 |
2,500 |
110 |
12.55 |
28.87 |
3.37 |
417 |
3,648,700 |
16.7 |
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