PROGRAM INFORMATION

PLAVIC MESA - 3/15/2006 through 12/7/2011

DATA DETAILS

March 15, 2006 through March 6, 2007:

This anemometer tower was owned by the San Isabel Electric Association. It was installed by SIEA on March 15, 2006. Also known by the name Williams, the site is 1.2 miles east-southeast of the town of Walsenburg. The tower is located on Plavic Mesa, which is elevated 200 to 300 feet above the surrounding terrain. Ravines and canyons characterize the landscape to the east. Vegetation is primarily range land with small trees and brush growing in the ravines.

All data was eing 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 30m. This equipment fed into an NRG Wind Explorer data logger. Seven 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.

Note that data from wind vane fails quality assurance beginning July 9, 2006. The wind vane apparently failed on this date.

Based on measurements taken by SIEA personnel during the tower installation, the wind vane was pointing at 41° 44' E from true north, so a data logger reading of 0° should actually be 41° 44' E. However, for this data, UND applied an offset of +315° to the wind vane data. The wind vane orientation will be confirmed again with onsite measurements. The data from June 28, 2006 through July 8, 2007 using a +315° offset and wind resource summary report for the period from March 15, 2006 through March 6, 2007 are available here:

• Plavic_Mesa_Wind_Resource_Summary_Report_2006_0315_to_2007_0306.pdf
• UND_Plavic_Mesa_2006_0315_to_2007_0306.txt

March 6, 2007 through December 7, 2011:

CSU was chosen as the contractor for the program on September 14, 2007. The last data for the site was received from SIEA covering the period through December 7, 2011. The data collected September 2007 is given below::

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

Using the raw data from all data plugs for this site, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.49. For this data, an offset of +59° was applied to all of the wind vane data collected to date, based on site measurements taken on February 10, 2010. For this report, a data validation analysis was performed for the period from March 15, 2006 through May 19, 2010. This data was filtered as follows:

1. Any wind speed data where the wind speed was less than 1 mph for 5 hours or more was deleted.
2. Any wind direction data where the direction changed less than 3° over 6 hours was deleted.

Windographer was then used to add in synthetic data to these intervals with suspect data.

In addition, the wind direction data was removed for the period from 17:40 on 7/9/2006 when the wind vane sensor failed through 9:40 on 6/11/2008 when the sensor was replaced.

Similarly, the wind speed sensor was apparently hit by a lighting strike on July 26, 2009. So the wind speed and standard deviation data was removed for the period from 15:40 on 7/26/2009 through January 21, 2010 at 12:40 when the wind speed sensor was replaced.

The combined data files and the Windographer files are given below in one of three ways: the combined raw data, the combined raw data with the bad wind direction data removed from 7/9/2006 through 6/11/2008 and the bad wind speed data from 7/26/2009 through 1/21/2010; and the combined raw data with the bad sensor data removed and validated data offset +59°as follows:

• Plavic_Mesa_2006_0315_to_2011_1207_Summary_Report.pdf
• Plavic_Mesa_2006_0315_to_2011_1207_without_data_validation.windog
• Plavic_Mesa_2006_0315_to_2011_1207_without_data_validation.txt
• Plavic_Mesa_2006_0315_to_2011_1207_without_data_validation_bad_WD30_WS30_removed.windog
• Plavic_Mesa_2006_0315_to_2011_1207_without_data_validation_bad_WD30_WS30_removed.txt
• Plavic_Mesa_2006_0315_to_2011_1207_with_data_validation_bad_WD30_WS30_removed_filled_offset_59.windog
• Plavic_Mesa_2006_0315_to_2011_1207_with_data_validation_bad_WD30_WS30_removed_filled_offset_59.txt

Final Wind Resource Summary

As of November 7, 2012, no more data is expected from this site and the anemometer tower will be removed from the site shortly. Highlights of the entire wind resource at this site through December 7, 2011 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. 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.

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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