COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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BYERS - 7/11/2008 through 7/20/2009

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 39° 33.604’ or N 39° 33’ 36"
Longitude:
W 104° 13.794’ or W 104° 13’ 47"
Township:
6 S
Range:
61 W
Section:
4
Elevation (ft.):
5,614
Tower Type:
NRG Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
30 m (98.4 ft)
Vane Offset (deg):
+62°
Direction Basis:
Magnetic North
Mag. Declination:
8° 52' E, changing by 8' W/yr
Wind Explorer S/N:
0662
Site No.:
3904

DATA DETAILS

July 11, 2008 to July 20, 2009:

The anemometer tower was installed on July 11, 2008. The site is located about 10 miles south of Byers in a wheat field located on the top of a rise. Strong westerly winds are expected at the site.

All data is 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 feeds into an NRG Wind Explorer data logger. All data plugs are sent to the Colorado ALP at Colorado State University for analysis. The data plug files and text versions of these files are given below.

Raw Wind Data Files
NRG Data Plug Files
Txt Files

Highest
2 sec
Gust
mph

Gust
Date/Time
48
7/17/08 13:39
Byers_3904_2008_0721_0923.A08 Byers_3904_2008_0721_0923.txt
59
7/23/08 14:26
Byers_3904_2008_0923_1113.A08 Byers_3904_2008_0923_1113.txt
59
10/21/08 19:06
Byers_3904_2008_1113_0116.A08 Byers_3904_2008_1113_0116.txt
55
11/30/08 10:07
Byers_3904_2009_0116_0318.A09 Byers_3904_2009_0116_0318.txt
71
2/17/09 11:57
Byers_3904_2009_0318_0505.A09 Byers_3904_2009_0318_0505.txt
68
3/24/09 7:46
Byers_3904_2009_0505_0720.A09 Byers_3904_2009_0505_0720.txt
79
7/13/09 13:59

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 +62° 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 3 hours or more was deleted.
  2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 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:

Final Wind Resource Summary

The anemometer tower was removed from the site on July 20, 2009. Highlights of the wind resource at this site for the entire monitoring period are shown below:

Data Properties
Variable
Data Set Starts:
7/11/2008 12:00 MST
Height above ground (m)
30
Data Set Ends:
7/20/2009 10:50
Mean 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
14.955
Data Set Duration:
12 months
Median 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
13.90
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Min 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
0.80
Elevation (ft.):
5,614
Max 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
57.60
Mean air density (kg/m³):
1.036
Mean power density (W/m²)
292
Wind Power Coefficients
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
2,557
Power Density at 50m:
353 W/m²
Energy pattern factor
1.885
Wind Power Class:
3 (Fair)
Weibull k
2.032
Wind Shear Coefficients
Weibull c (mph)
16.871
Power Law Exponent:
0.121
1-hr autocorrelation coefficient
0.792
Surface Roughness:
0.01 m
Diurnal pattern strength
0.113
Roughness Class:
0.780
Hour of peak wind speed
22
Roughness Description:
Rough Pasture
Mean turbulence intensity
0.152
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)
7.218

Frequency of calms (%)

0

Total data elements

161,547

Suspect/missing elements

6,386

Data completeness (%)

96.0

 

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
14.95
15.45
6.93
2.0
17,500
26.7
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
30
14.95
6.95
3.37
2.2
19,100
21.8
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
30
14.95
2.34
9.77
0.3
2,600
30.0
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
30
14.95
13.63
0
0.5
4,600
29.3
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
30
14.95
14.92
8.41
0.9
8,300
31.5
Northern Power NW 100/20
21
100
30
14.95
23.46
0
18.1
158,400
18.1
Northern Power NW 100/21
21
100
37
15.34
12.80
0
22.8
199,800
22.8
Vestas V47 - 660 kW
47
660
65
16.66
11.82
1.00
176.1
1,542,600
26.7
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
80.5
17.17
11.40
1.60
401.5
3,516,900
26.8
Vestas V80 - 2.0 MW
80
2,000
100
17.70
14.51
3.65
588.4
5,154,700
29.4
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
110
17.94
10.62
9.04
819
7,174,700
32.8

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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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