COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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GRANBY - 1/5/2010 to 5/20/2011

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 40° 6.993’ or N 40° 6’ 59.6"
Longitude:
W 105° 55.450’ or W 105° 55’ 27.0"
Survey Meridian:
Colorado, Sixth Principal Meridian
Township:
2 N
Range:
76 W
Section:
20
Elevation (ft.):
8,018
Datum:
WGS 84
Tower Type:
NRG Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
20 m (65.6 feet)
Vane Offset (deg):
+165°
Direction Basis:
Magnetic North
Mag. Declination:
8° 56' E, changing by 7' W/yr
Wind Explorer S/N:
0750
Site No.:
1112

CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Kevin Gosselin, Todd MacDonald, Aron Seader, Eric Rasbach, Daniel Fink, Mike Kostrzewa, and Nathan Davis

DATA DETAILS

January 5, 2010 to May 20, 2011:

The anemometer tower was installed on January 5, 2010 and removed on May 20, 2011. The site was located in Grand County in an open field about 2 miles NNE of Granby and about 0.4 mile off of Hwy 34. The location was flat with clear viewsheds all around. The wind was expected to predominate from the NE and SW along the Colorado River valley between Lake Granby and the Windy Gap.

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 30m. The certification for the anemometer is as follows:

NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometer
Model No.
1900
Serial No.
179500087805
Calibration Date
10/31/2008 4:27:49 a.m.
Slope
0.761 m/s per Hz
Offset
0.35 m/s

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.

Raw Wind Data Files
NRG Data Plug Files
Txt Files
Highest
2 sec
Gust
mph
Gust
Date/Time
Granby_1112_2010_0105_0509.A10 Granby_1112_2010_0105_0509.txt
57
4/4/2010 8:56
Granby_1112_2010_0509_0815.A10 Granby_1112_2010_0509_0815.txt
68
5/24/2010 9:45
Granby_1112_2010_0815_0101.A10 Granby_1112_2010_0815_0101.txt
68
11/21/2010 20:55
Granby_1112_2011_0130_0520.A11 Granby_1112_2011_0130_0520.txt
55
2/19/2011 23:49

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.

Also, note that although the last data plug was installed on January 1, 2011, the battery level was too low (6.5V) to keep the logger powered and recording. The lessee replaced the battery on January 30, 2011, which was sufficient to start recording again. So there is a gap of about 29 days when no data was collected.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.45. For this data an offset of +165° 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 6 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

Highlights of the final wind resource assessment at this site are shown below:

Data Properties
Variable
Data Set Starts:
1/5/2010 13:40 MST
Height above ground (m)
20
Data Set Ends:
5/20/2011 13:20
Mean 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
6.470
Data Set Duration:
16 months
Median 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
4.130
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Min 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
0.126
Elevation (ft.):
8,018
Max 10 min avg. wind speed (mph)
51.05
Mean air density (kg/m³):
0.962
Mean power density (W/m²)
56
Wind Power Coefficients
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
490
Power Density at 50m:
75 W/m²
Energy pattern factor
4.808
Wind Power Class:
1 (Poor)
Weibull k
1.107
Wind Shear Coefficients
Weibull c (mph)
6.737
Power Law Exponent:
0.126
1-hr autocorrelation coefficient
0.770
Surface Roughness:
0.01 m
Diurnal pattern strength
0.545
Roughness Class:
0.78
Hour of peak wind speed
15
Roughness Description:
Rough Pasture
Mean turbulence intensity
0.3176
Note: The wind power density and wind power class at 50m are projections of the data from 20m. 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)
6.06
Total data elements
215,994
Suspect/missing elements
16,236
Data completeness (%)
92.5

 

Probability Distribution Function at 20m: Frequency (%) vs. Wind Speed

 

Vertical Wind Shear, Height (m) vs Mean Wind Speed (mph)

 

Wind Energy Rose at 20 meters

 

Wind Frequency Rose at 20 meters

 

Daily Wind Speed Profile, Hourly Mean Wind Speed (mph) vs. Hour of the Day

 

Seasonal Wind Speed Profile, Monthly Mean Wind Speed (mph) vs. Month

 

Boxplot: Seasonal Wind Speed Profile, Monthly Mean Wind Speed (mph) vs. Month

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.

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
20 6.47 68.5 0.7 0.6 4,800 7.4
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
20 6.47 56.1 0.2 0.6 5,200 5.9
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
20 6.47 32.5 0.9 0.1 700 8.4
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
20 6.47 66.4 0.0 0.2 1,400 8.8
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
20 6.47 68.5 0.8 0.3 2,500 9.4
Northern Power NW 100/21
21
100
37 6.99 64.4 0.0 7.3 64,200 7.3
Vestas V47 - 660 kW
47
660
65 7.51 64.2 0.1 53.9 471,800 8.2
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
80.5 7.71 68.0 0.8 105.1 920,300 7.0
Vestas V80 - 2.0 MW
80
2,000
100 7.92 67.3 0.3 182.0 1,593,900 9.1
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
110 8.02 62.6 1.0 259.7 2,274,900 10.4

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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Last updated: June 2009
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