PROGRAM INFORMATION

LITTLE PARK (Grand Junction)

8/7/2009 to 11/20/2009

 CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Daniel Fink, Nate Davis, Eric Rasbach, Jake Renquist, Derrick Benallie, and Mike Kostrzewa (taking picture).

DATA DETAILS

August 7, 2009 to November 20, 2009:

The anemometer tower was installed on August 7, 2009 and finished recording on November 30, 2009. The tower was removed from the site on July 28, 2010. The site was located on a mesa above Grand Junction, just south of the Colorado National Monument in Mesa County. The site was about 9 miles SW of Grand Junction and about 3.5 miles east of Glade Park. The site was flat in all directions with the lessee's house and barn about 400 feet SSW from the anemometer. The winds wee expected to be strong from this direction.

All data was collected using an NRG #40 Calibrated Anemometer and NRG #200 Wind Vane mounted on a tilt-up tower located at a height of 20m. The certification for the anemometer is as follows:

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 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: The upwind rock anchor pulled out of the ground and the tower fell on or about 22:20 on November 20, 2009 so all data past this time should be considered suspect. A suitable solution could not be found to replace the upwind anchor so the tower was removed from the site on July 28, 2010.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.45. For this data an offset of +120° 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 3 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:

• Little_Park_3808_2009_0807_to_2009_1120_without_data_validation.windog
• Little_Park_3808_2009_0807_to_2009_1120_without_data_validation.txt
• Little_Park_3808_2009_0807_to_2009_1120_with_data_validation_offset_120.windog
• Little_Park_3808_2009_0807_to_2009_1120_with_data_validation_offset_120.txt

Final Wind Resource Summary

The anemometer tower stopped recording on November 22, 2009 and the tower was removed from the site on July 28, 2010. Highlights of the wind resource at this site for the entire monitoring period are shown below. Note that since the wind resource was only measured for 3.5 months, the results should be viewed skeptically:

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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