PROGRAM INFORMATION

VILLA GROVE - 7/28/2006 through 05/19/2008

DATA DETAILS

July 28, 2006 through July 8, 2007:

The anemometer tower was installed on July 28, 2006. The site is located in the San Luis Valley between two mountain ranges about seven miles south of the town of Villa Grove. The tower was placed on some pasture land about a half mile east of State Highway 17. Although the tower is on pasture land, crop circles surround the area except to the west. The exposure to the wind is good especially along the axis of the valley which runs north to south.

All data was collected using an NRG #40 Anemometer and NRG #200P 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. Eight data plugs were sent into the Governor's Energy Office and then to the University of North Dakota for analysis. The data plug files and text versions of these files are given below.

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 +180° to the wind vane data. This corrected data from June 28, 2006 through July 8, 2007 and wind resource summary report for the period from July 28, 2006 through October 18, 2006 are available here:

• UND_Villa_Grove_2006_0728_to_2007_0708.txt
• Villa_Grove_Wind_Resource_Summary_Report_2006_0726_to_2006_1018.pdf

July 8, 2007 through May 19, 2008:

CSU was chosen as the contractor for the program on September 14, 2007. Data collected since is given below:

Again, it is important to note that these are the raw files without any compensation for offset or temperature.

From both the UND and CSU data collected for this site, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.13. For this data, an offset of +180° was applied to the wind vane data. For this report, a data quality analysis similar to the UND analysis was performed for the data from for the period from July 28, 2006 through January 1, 2008. This data was filtered two ways:

1. Any wind speed data where the wind speed was less than 1 mph for 3 hours or more was deleted.
2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 5 degrees over 3 hours was deleted

Windographer was then used to add in synthetic data to these intervals with suspect data. The summary report, the combined data files (with and without the data quality analysis), and the Windographer files (with and without the data quality analysis) are given below:

• Villa_Grove_Wind_Resource_Summary_Report_2006_0728_to_2008_0101.pdf
• Villa_Grove_2006_0728_to_2008_0101_180_offset_without_data_quality.windog
• Villa_Grove_2006_0728_to_2008_0101_180_offset_without_data_quality.txt
• Villa_Grove_2006_0728_to_2008_0101_180_offset_with_data_quality.windog
• Villa_Grove_2006_0728_to_2008_0101_180_offset_with_data_quality.txt

Final Wind Resource Summary: July 28, 2006 through May 19, 2008

When the tower was removed on May 19, 2008, it was noted that the null point on the wind vane sensor did not ppoint in the same direction as the wind vane, but was 180° from the direction the wind vane pointed. The wind vane pointed 312° so the null point on the wind vane was actually pointed to +132°. Thus, the true offset (to correct to magnetic north), should be +132°.

An analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.2, applying an offset of +132° was applied to the wind vane data. For this report, a data quality analysis was performed on the data for the period from July 28, 2006 through May 19, 2008. This data was filtered two ways:

1. Any wind speed data where the wind speed was less than 1 mph for 3 hours or more was deleted.
2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 5 degrees over 3 hours was deleted

Windographer was then used to add in synthetic data to these intervals with suspect data. The combined data files (with and without the data quality analysis), and the Windographer files (with and without the data quality analysis) are given below:

• Villa_Grove_2006_0726_to_2008_0519_132_offset_without_data_quality.windog
• Villa_Grove_2006_0726_to_2008_0519_132_offset_without_data_quality.txt
• Villa_Grove_2006_0726_to_2008_0519_132_offset_with_data_quality.windog
• Villa_Grove_2006_0726_to_2008_0519_132_offset_with_data_quality.txt

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

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.

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