COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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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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Last updated: June 2009
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