COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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AGUILAR - 11/3/2004 through 1/30/2006

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 37° 29.6598’ or N 37° 29′ 40″
Longitude:
W 104° 38.4612’ or W 104° 38′ 28″
Township:
29 S
Range:
65 W
Section:
26
Elevation (ft.):
6,333
Tower Type:
NRG Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
30 m (98.4 ft)
Vane Offset (deg):
+250°
Direction Basis:
Unknown
Site Number:
0668
Wind Explorer S/N:
0838

DATA DETAILS

November 3, 2004 through January 30, 2006:

The anemometer tower was installed on November 3, 2004. The site was located approximately 6 miles north of the town of Aguilar. The tower was located next to foothills on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. Vegetation around the site was primarily grass with some brush.

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 30m. 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
Aguilar_0668_2004_1103_1202.A04 Aguilar_0668_2004_1103_1202.txt
Aguilar_0668_2004_1202_0103.A04 Aguilar_0668_2004_1202_0103.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_0103_0211.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_0103_0211.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_0211_0408.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_0211_0408.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_0408_0505.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_0408_0505.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_0524_0613.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_0524_0613.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_0613_0707.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_0613_0707.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_0707_0823.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_0707_0823.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_0823_1003.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_0823_1003.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_1003_1107.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_1003_1107.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_1107_1212.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_1107_1212.txt
Aguilar_0668_2005_1212_0130.A05 Aguilar_0668_2005_1212_0130.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 +250° 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 applied 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 January 30, 2006. 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 +9° are shown below:

Data Properties
Variable
Data Set Starts:
11/3/2004 12:20
Height above ground (m)
30
Data Set Ends:
1/30/2006 12:20
Mean wind speed (mph)
12.06
Data Set Duration:
15 months
Median wind speed (mph)
10.62
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Min wind speed (mph)
0.00
Elevation (ft.):
6,333
Max wind speed (mph)
56.07
Calm threshold (mph):
0
Mean power density (W/m²)
196
Wind Power Coefficients
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
1,714
Power Density at 50m:
236 W/m²
Energy pattern factor
2.465
Wind Power Class:
2 (Marginal)
Weibull k
1.584
Wind Shear Coefficients
Weibull c (mph)
13.42
Power Law Exponent:
0.121
1-hr autocorrelation coefficient
0.755
Surface Roughness:
0.01 m
Diurnal pattern strength
0.086
Roughness Class:
0.780
Hour of peak wind speed
17
Roughness Description:
Rough Pasture
Mean turbulence intensity
0.224
Note: The wind power density and wind power class at 50m are projections of the data from 30m. A surface roughness of 0.01 meters was assumed for this projection. This is equal to that of a rough pasture. This value was then used this to calculate the roughness class and the power law exponent shown above.
Standard deviation (mph)
7.73
Coefficient of variation (%)
64.1
Frequency of calms (%)
0.96
Possible records
65,232
Valid records
60,414
Missing records
4,818
Data recovery rate (%)
92.6

 

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
30
12.06
30.77
4.27
1.44
12,600
19.2
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
30
12.06
17.32
2.22
1.57
13,800
15.7
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
30
12.06
7.31
5.99
0.22
1,900
21.8
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
30
12.06
27.52
0
0.39
3,400
21.4
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
30
12.06
30.70
5.12
0.69
6,100
23.1
Northern Power NW 100/20
20
100
30
12.06
41.03
0
12.7
111,500
12.7
Vestas V47 - 660 kW
47
660
65
13.44
25.90
0.57
127
1,108,200
19.2
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
80.5
13.84
31.35
4.40
265
2,322,700
17.7
Vestas V80 - 2.0 MW
80
2,000
100
14.27
30.08
2.34
427
3,738,100
21.3
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
110
14.46
23.53
5.53
598
5,236,400
23.9

 


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Last updated: June 2009
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