COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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BYERS EAST - 12/4/2010 to 12/20/2011

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 39° 40.675’ or N 39° 40’ 40.50"
Longitude:
W 104° 11.592’ or W 104° 11’ 35.52"
Survey Meridian:
Colorado, Sixth Principal Meridian
Township:
4 S
Range:
61 W
Section:
27
Elevation:
5,278 feet (1,608.7 m)
Datum:
WGS 84
Tower Type:
NRG Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
20 m (65.6 feet)
Vane Offset (deg):
+100°
Direction Basis:
Magnetic North
Mag. Declination:
8° 34' E, changing by 8' W/yr
Wind Explorer S/N:
0662
Site No.:
9340

 CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Mike Kostrzewa, Laura Ruff, Jake Renquist, and Eric Rasbach.

DATA DETAILS

December 4, 2010 to December 20, 2011:

The anemometer tower was installed on December 4, 2010 and removed on December 20, 2011. The site is located about 2.7 miles SE of Byers at the corner of County Road S 18 and South County Road 185. The tower was located in a field and on top of a slight rise about 350 feet south of the leasee's house and about 160 feet SSW of a large metal equipment shed. The wind was expected to blow from the N and NW at the site.

All data is 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:

NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometer
Model No.
1900
Serial No.
179500060330
Calibration Date
5/18/2008 2:53 p.m.
Slope
0.761 m/s per Hz
Offset
0.34 m/s

This equipment feeds into an NRG Wind Explorer data logger. All data plugs are 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
m/s
Gust
Date/Time
Byers_East_9340_2010_1204_0122.A10 Byers_East_9340_2010_1204_0122.txt
24
12/11/2010 13:16
Byers_East_9340_2011_0122_0411.A11 Byers_East_9340_2011_0122_0411.txt
26
4/9/2011 13:48
Byers_East_9340_2011_0411_0810.A11 Byers_East_9340_2011_0411_0810.txt
29
8/5/2011 18:19
Byers_East_9340_2011_0810_0917.A11 Byers_East_9340_2011_0810_0917.txt
26
8/16/2011 16:18
Byers_East_9340_2011_0917_1220.A11 Byers_East_9340_2011_0917_1220.txt
30
10/6/2011 13:49

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.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.50. For this data an offset of +100° 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 m/s for 3 hours or more was deleted.
  2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 degrees over 5 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:

Final Wind Resource Summary

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

Data Properties
Variable
Data Set Starts:
12/4/2010 14:10 MST
Height above ground (m)
20
Data Set Ends:
12/20/2011 14:10
10-min. mean wind speed (m/s)
5.396
Data Set Duration:
12.5 months
10-min median wind speed (m/s)
5.070
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
10-min min. wind speed (m/s)
0.186
Elevation:
5,278 ft (1,608.7 m)
10-min max wind speed (m/s)
22.220
Mean air density (kg/m³):
1.047
10-min standard deviation (m/s)
2.8452
Wind Power Coefficients
Weibull k
1.972
Power Density at 50m:
232 W/m²
Weibull c (m/s)
6.081
Wind Power Class:
2 (Marginal)
Mean power density (W/m²)
162
Wind Shear Coefficients
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
1,418
Power Law Exponent:
0.126
Mean turbulence intensity
0.1706
Surface Roughness:
0.01 m
Energy pattern factor
1.967
Roughness Class:
0.78
1-hr autocorrelation coefficient
0.761
Roughness Description:
Rough Pasture
Diurnal pattern strength
0.070
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 the surface roughness for a rough pasture. This value was then used to calculate the roughness class and the power law exponent shown above.
Hour of peak wind speed
20
Total data elements
164,592
Missing data elements
3,575
Data completeness (%)
97.8

 

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

 

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

 

Wind Frequency Rose at 20 meters

 

Wind Energy Rose at 20 meters

 

Daily Wind Speed Profile at 20m, Hourly Mean Wind Speed (m/s) vs. Hour of the Day

 

Seasonal Wind Speed Profile at 20m, Monthly Mean Wind Speed (m/s) vs. Month

 

Boxplot: Seasonal Wind Speed Profile, Monthly Mean Wind Speed (m/s) 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
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
%
Bergey Excel-R
6.7
7.5
20
5.40 21.7 3.1 1.5 13,100 20.0
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
20
5.40 10.4 1.6 1.6 14,200 16.3
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
20
5.40 3.5 4.2 0.2 2,000 22.7
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
20
5.40 19.9 0.0 0.4 3,700 23.6
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
20
5.40 21.7 3.7 0.8 6,600 25.0
Northern Power NW 100/21
21
100
37
5.83 17.1 0.0 19.9 174,500 19.9
Vestas V47 - 660 kW
47
660
65
6.26 16.3 0.4 144.7 1,267,300 21.9
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
80.5
6.43 21.1 3.8 287.0 2,514,200 19.1
Vestas V80 - 2.0 MW
80
2,000
100
6.61 19.9 2.0 484.4 4,243,600 24.2
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
110
6.69 14.8 4.5 682.6 5,980,000 27.3

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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