COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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PINGREE PARK - 8/13/2010 to 11/20/2013

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 40° 34.139’ or N 40° 34’ 8"
Longitude:
W 105° 35.292’or W 106° 35’ 18"
Survey Meridian:
Colorado, Sixth Principal Meridian
Township:
7N
Range:
73W
Section:
16
Elevation (ft.):
2,767.6 m ( 9,080 ft)
Datum:
WGS 84
Tower Type:
Earth Turbines Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
34 m (111.5 feet)
Vane Offset (deg):
+52° (built into raw data)
Direction Basis:
Magnetic North
Mag. Declination:
9° 25' E, changing by 8' W/yr
Symphonie S/N:
309020390
Site No.:
4005

 

CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Kevin Gosselin, Mark Goudreault, Eric Rasbach, Jake Renquist, Sarah Bass, Laura Ruff, John Purcell, and Mike Kostrzewa (taking picture). Not shown: Daniel Fink, Todd MacDonald, and Hunter Vassau

DATA DETAILS

August 13, 2010 to November 20, 2013:

The anemometer tower was installed on August 13, 2010. The site is located on CSU's Pingree Park campus, on a small ridge above and across the road from the ropes course, near the entrance to the campus. This spot appears to be one of the best spots in the valley and the ridge appears to be an ideal location to install a wind turbine. The terrain around the site contains shrub oaks, small aspens, small pines and a few larger trees nearby. Two power transmission lines lie within 150 feet of the site.

Data is collected using three (3) NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometers and one (1) NRG #200P Wind Vane, as follows:

  • Anemometers
    1. 33.8 m (111 feet) heading 200° on an NRG 60" standard boom
    2. 33.8 m (111 feet) heading 290° on an NRG 60" standard boom
    3. 20.0 m (65.6 feet) heading 230° on an NRG 60" standard boom
  • Wind Vane
    1. 34.7 m (114 feet) heading 250° on an NRG 60" standard boom with the null point facing toward the tower

There is also a temperature sensor at a height of 1.8 m (6 feet) on a 6" boom.

All sensors feed into an NRG Symphonie data logger. The certifications for the anemometers are as follows:

NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometers
Anem. No.
1
2
3
Height
33.8 m
33.8 m
20 m
Model No.
1900
1900
1900
Serial No.
1795-00087848
1795-00087807
1795-00087819
Calibration Date
10/31/2008 4:47 p.m.
10/31/2008 4:47 p.m.
10/31/08 7:30 p.m.
Slope
0.756 m/s per Hz
0.758 m/s per Hz
0.758 m/s per Hz
Offset
0.39 m/s
0.34 m/s
0.34 m/s

The data logger generated wind reports for each day. Using the Symphonie Data Retriever software, each day's data was complied into one large data file. A zipped file that contains all of the NRG data files and a text version of the aggregate data for all days are given below:

Raw Wind Data Files
NRG Data Plug Files
Txt Files
Pingree_Park_4050_SDR_2010_0814_to_2013_1120.zip Pingree_Park_4050_SDR_2010_0820_to_2013_1120.txt

It is important to note that the wind direction data included in these files has already been adjusted for offset at the data logger.

From this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed for entire data collection period using Windographer 2.4.6. No offset was applied to the wind vane data as none was needed. Since the data set contains data for two or more wind speed sensors at different heights above the ground, Windographer considered the wind shear relationship between different wind speed sensors to synthesize missing data for those wind speed sensors. A best fit using the power law profile was chosen to synthesize the data. Once the wind shear relation was chosen, a daily influence on the wind shear profile was considered so that in each time step where the wind speed is known at one height but not at a different height, Windographer estimated the unknown wind speed based on the best-fit wind shear profile for the appropriate hour of the day.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 3.91. For this analysis, a data quality analysis was performed on the data. This data was flagged for icing in two ways:

  1. Any wind speed data where the wind speed was less than 1 m/s for 3 hours or more when the temperature was less than 2°C was deleted.
  2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 degrees over 3 hours when the temperature was less than 2°C 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:

Interim Wind Resource Summary

Highlights of the wind resource to date at this site are shown below:

Data Properties
Data Set Starts:
8/14/2010 00:00 MST
Data Set Ends:
11/20/2013 10:00
Data Set Duration:
3.3 years
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Elevation:
2,767 m (9,078 ft.)
Mean air density (kg/m³):
0.906
Wind Power Coefficients
Power Density at 50m:
351 W/m²
Wind Power Class:
3 (Fair)
Wind Shear Coefficients
Power Law Exponent:
0.177
Surface Roughness:
0.0914 m
Roughness Class:
1.93
Roughness Description:
Few trees

 

Variable
Height above ground
A: 34m (111.5 ft.)
B: 34m (111.5 ft.)
20m (65.6 ft.)
10-min. Mean wind speed (m/s)
5.938 5.927 5.420
10-min Median wind speed (m/s)
4.900 4.890 4.470
10-min Min. wind speed (m/s)
0.39 0.30 0.30
10-min Max wind speed (m/s)
31.830 32.100 30.180
10-min Standard deviation (m/s)
4.372 4.351 4.105
Weibull k
1.372 1.386 1.332
Weibull c (m/s)
6.494 6.502 5.901
Mean power density (W/m²)
295 291 234
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
2,581 2,551 2,047
Mean turbulence intensity
0.27 0.27 0.29
Energy pattern factor
3.069 3.049 3.201
Possible records
171,996 171,996 171,996
Valid records
171,995 171,995 171,270
Missing records
1 1 726
Data recovery rate (%)
100 100 99.58

 

Vertical Wind Shear, Height (m) vs Mean Wind Speed (m/s)

 

Wind Energy Rose at 33.8 meters

 

Wind Frequency Rose at 33.8 meters

 

Daily Wind Speed Profile, Hourly Mean Wind Speed (m/s) vs. Hour of the Day

 

Seasonal Wind Speed Profile, Monthly Mean Wind Speed (m/s) vs. Month

 

Probability Distribution Function at 33.8m - Sensor A: Frequency (%) vs. Wind Speed

 

Probability Distribution Function at 33.8m - Sensor B: Frequency (%) vs. Wind Speed

 

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

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.

Keep in mind too that listing a particular turbine doesn't imply an endorsement - not does it imply that installing a particular turbine model is feasible or recommended for a particular site. For consistency, the larger turbines are included even at sites that where they may not be practical so that one can compare the relative production of different sites.

Turbine
Rotor
Diameter
meters
Rotor
Power
kW
Hub
Height
meters
Hub
Height
Wind
Speed
m/s
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
%
Southwest AIR X - 45 ft tower
1.5
0.4
13.7 5.06 43.8 0.0 0.0 192 5.5
Bergey XL.1 - 100 ft tower
2.5
1.0
30.0 5.80 9.9 10.3 0.3 2,400 27.7
Southwest Skystream 3.7 - 45 foot tower
3.7
1.8
13.7 5.06 37.5 4.2 0.4 3,600 22.8
Southwest Whisper 500 - 42 ft tower
4.5
3.0
12.8 5.00 41.7 6.1 0.7 6,000 22.9
Endurance S-250 - 100 ft tower
5.5
5.0
30.0 5.80 0.1 0.0 0.9 7,800 17.8
Bergey Excel-R - 100 ft tower
6.7
7.5
30.0 5.80 34.8 7.0 1.8 15,600 23.8
Bergey Excel-S - 100 ft tower
6.7
10.0
30.0 5.80 22.3 4.9 2.1 18,300 20.9
Endurance E-3120 - 100 ft tower
19.2
55.0
30.0 5.80 31.1 0.0 13.5 118,300 24.6
Northern Power 100-21 - 121 ft tower
21.0
100
37.0 6.53 29.3 6.1 407.0 3,565,300 27.1
GE 1.5-77 - 213 ft tower
77
1,500
65.0 6.00 18.6 0.0 20.0 174,900 20.0
Vestas V100 - 262 ft tower
100
2,000
80.0 6.73 27.6 3.6 623.1 5,458,800 31.2

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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