COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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BRUSH - 10/4/2008 through 12/29/2009

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 40° 8.814 ’ or N 40° 8’ 49"
Longitude:
W 103° 40.054’ or W 103° 40’ 3"
Township:
2 N
Range:
56 W
Section:
8
Elevation (ft.):
4,371
Tower Type:
NRG Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
30 m (98.4 ft)
Vane Offset (deg):
205°
Direction Basis:
Magnetic North
Mag. Declination:
8° 39' E, changing by 8' W/yr
Wind Explorer S/N:
1378
Site No.:
4003

DATA DETAILS

October 4 , 2008 through December 29, 2009:

The anemometer tower was installed on October 4, 2008. The site is located west of the Kamp Ranch about 8 miles SSE of Brush in a field with scrub brush. The site has good access to wind from all directions.

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 feeds into an NRG Wind Explorer data logger. All data plugs was 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
77
11/6/08 4:49
Brush_4003_2008_1111_0109.A08 Brush_4003_2008_1111_0109.txt
62
11/30/08 14:54
Brush_4003_2009_0109_0207.A09 Brush_4003_2009_0109_0207.txt
57
1/19/09 11:36
Brush_4003_2009_0207_0514.A09 Brush_4003_2009_0207_0514.txt
64
3/21/09 15:27
Brush_4003_2009_0514_0804.A09 Brush_4003_2009_0514_0804.txt
86
6/26/09 15:26
Brush_4003_2009_0804_1229.A09 Brush_4003_2009_0804_1229.txt
59
8/6/09 17:00

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: The windspeed sensor failed on 1/19/09 at 17:10. It was replaced on 2/7/09 at 11:40. All windspeed data during this period was ignored during the analysis.

The certification for this replacement anemometer is as follows:

NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometer
Model No.
1900
Serial No.
179500090563
Calibration Date
12/1/2008 5:23:53 a.m.
Slope
0.759 m/s per Hz
Offset
0.30 m/s

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.32. For this data an offset of +205° was applied to the wind vane data. For this report, a validation 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 5 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 validation analysis), and the Windographer files (with and without the validation analysis) are given below:

Final Wind Resource Summary

The anemometer tower was removed from the site on December 29, 2009. Highlights of the wind resource at this site for the entire monitoring period are shown below:

Data Properties
Variable
Data Set Starts:
10/04/2008 14:00 MST
Height above ground (m)
30
Data Set Ends:
12/29/2009 13:00
Mean 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
10.874
Data Set Duration:
15 months
Median 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
9.800
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Min 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
0.344
Elevation (ft.):
4,371
Max 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
54.40
Mean air density (kg/m³):
1.077
Mean power density (W/m²)
157
Wind Power Coefficients
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
1,372
Power Density at 50m:
194 W/m²
Energy pattern factor
2.534
Wind Power Class:
2 (Marginal)
Weibull k
1.590
Wind Shear Coefficients
Weibull c (mph)
12.112
Power Law Exponent:
0.121
1-hr autocorrelation coefficient
0.800
Surface Roughness:
0.01 m
Diurnal pattern strength
0.189
Roughness Class:
0.780
Hour of peak wind speed
17
Roughness Description:
Rough pasture
Mean turbulence intensity
0.199
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 rough pasture. This value was then used this to calculate the roughness class and the power law exponent shown above.
Standard deviation (mph)
6.990
Frequency of calms (%)
0
Total data elements
194,814
Suspect/missing elements
5,263
Data completeness (%)
97.3

 

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 18%. 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
10.87
32.46
2.98
1.1
9,500
14.4
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
30
10.87
18.06
1.69
1.2
10,500
12.0
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
30
10.87
8.50
4.27
0.2
1,500
16.6
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
30
10.87
30.45
0
0.3
2,700
17.1
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
30
10.87
32.43
3.61
0.5
4,700
18.0
Northern Power NW 100/21
20.7
100
37
11.15
29.14
0
13.0
113,700
13.0
Vestas V47 - 660 kW
47
660
65
11.94
27.56
0.51
92.6
810,900
14.0
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
80.5
12.25
33.57
3.12
183.8
1,610,400
12.3
Vestas V80 - 2.0 MW
80
2,000
100
12.58
32.45
1.70
309.3
2,709,100
15.5
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
110
12.73
25.73
3.70
434.4
3,805,300
17.4

 


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Last updated: June 2009
Email questions & comments to: michael@engr.colostate.edu
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