PROGRAM INFORMATION

TRINIDAD - 10/23/2010 to 10/22/2011

 CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Eric Rasbach, Hunter Vasau, Aron Seader, Laura Ruff, and Jake Renquiist (taking picture).

DATA DETAILS

October 23, 2010 to October 22, 2011:

The anemometer tower was installed on October 23, 2010 and removed on October 24, 2011. The site was about 650 feet east of I-25, about 0.4 mile SSE of Exit 18 (El Morro Road). The tower was located in an open field with a few scrub oaks and yucca. The nearest buildings are about 150 feet east and downhill from the tower and another building about 300 feet SW and uphill from the tower. The wind was expected to blow NE/SW up and down the valley.

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.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.49. For this data an offset of +170° 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. A summary report, the combined data files (with and without the validation analysis), and the Windographer files (with and without the validation analysis) are given below:

• Trinidad_7340_2010_1023_to_2011_1022_Summary_Report.pdf
• Trinidad_7340_2010_1023_to_2011_1022_without_data_validation.windog
• Trinidad_7340_2010_1023_to_2011_1022_without_data_validation.txt
• Trinidad_7340_2010_1023_to_2011_1022_with_data_validation_offset_170.windog
• Trinidad_7340_2010_1023_to_2011_1022_with_data_validation_offset_

Final Wind Resource Summary

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

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.

For more information Contact Us!