COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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CASTLE ROCK - 4/24/2008 through 6/5/2009

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 39° 17.448’ or N 39° 17’ 26"
Longitude:
W 104° 50.284’ or W 104° 50’ 17"
Township:
9 S
Range:
67 W
Section:
1
Elevation (ft.):
7,000
Tower Type:
NRG Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
20 m (65.6 ft)
Vane Offset (deg):
+10°
Direction Basis:
9° 11' E, changing by 8' W/yr
Mag. Declination:
Magnetic North
Wind Explorer S/N:
1241
Site No.:
3904

DATA DETAILS

April 24, 2008 to June 5, 2009:

The anemometer tower was installed on April 24, 2008. The site was located SE of Castle Rock and about 3 miles due east of Tomah on top of a mesa. The site was located on a small ranch, with the mesa dropping off about 1/4 mile north of the site.

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 20m. This equipment fed into an NRG Wind Explorer data logger. All data plugs were sent to the Colorado ALP at Colorado State University for analysis. The data plug files and text versions for all files received during the measuring period are given below.

Raw Wind Data Files
NRG Data Plug Files
Txt Files

Highest
2 sec
Gust
mph

Gust
Date/Time
54
5/8/08 11:01
Castle_Rock_3904_2008_0606_0818.A08 Castle_Rock_3904_2008_0606_0818.txt
54
6/11/08 14:12
Castle_Rock_3904_2008_0818_1021.A08 Castle_Rock_3904_2008_0818_1021.txt
42
9/22/08 12:22
Castle_Rock_3904_2008_1021_0218.A08 Castle_Rock_3904_2008_1021_0218.txt
55
12/30/08 06:11
Castle_Rock_3904_2009_0218_0605.A09 Castle_Rock_3904_2009_0218_0605.txt
59
3/5/09 14:01

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.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.45. For this data an offset of +10° was applied to the wind vane data. For this report, a data quality analysis was performed on the data. This data was filtered two ways:

  1. Any wind speed data where the wind speed was less than 1 mph for 2 hours or more was deleted.
  2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 degrees over 6 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:

Final Wind Resource Summary

The anemometer tower was removed from the site on June 5, 2009. Highlights of the wind resource at this site for the entire monitoring period are shown below:

Data Properties
Variable
Data Set Starts:
4/24/2008 13:40 MST
Height above ground (m)
20
Data Set Ends:
6/5/2009 10:20
Mean 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
9.795
Data Set Duration:
13 months
Median 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
9.00
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Min 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
0.729
Elevation (ft.):
7,000
Max 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
42.53
Mean air density (kg/m³):
0.993
Mean power density (W/m²)
87
Wind Power Coefficients
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
760
Power Density at 50m:
145 W/m²
Energy pattern factor
2.082
Wind Power Class:
1 (Poor)
Weibull k
1.836
Wind Shear Coefficients
Weibull c (mph)
11.00
Power Law Exponent:
0.191
1-hr autocorrelation coefficient
0.754
Surface Roughness:
0.15 m
Diurnal pattern strength
0.127
Roughness Class:
2.34
Hour of peak wind speed
18
Roughness Description:
Few trees
Mean turbulence intensity
0.2604
Note: The wind power density and wind power class at 50m are projections of the data from 20m. A surface roughness of 0.15 m was assumed for this projection. This is equal to an area with a few trees. This value was then used this to calculate the roughness class and the power law exponent shown above.
Standard deviation (mph)
5.487
Frequency of calms (%)
0
Total data elements
175,164
Suspect/missing elements
1,348
Data completeness (%)
99.2

 

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 10.37 32.950 1.030 0.8 7,400 11.3
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
30 10.37 16.530 0.390 0.9 8,000 9.1
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
30 10.37 5.980 1.430 0.1 1,100 13.1
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
20 9.79 32.120 0.000 0.2 1,900 12.2
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
20 9.79 35.630 0.810 0.4 3,400 12.8
Northern Power NW 100/20
20
100
25 10.11 30.480 0.000 7.8 68,000 7.8
Vestas V47 - 660 kW
47
660
65 11.55 26.740 0.040 74.7 654,800 11.3
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
80.5 11.9 33.810 0.920 143.8 1,259,500 9.6
Vestas V80 - 2.0 MW
80
2,000
100 12.27 32.120 0.380 260.5 2,281,600 13.0
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
110 12.44 24.010 1.250 374.2 3,278,400 15.0

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Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523 USA (970) 491-7709
Last updated: June 2009
Email questions & comments to: michael@engr.colostate.edu
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