PROGRAM INFORMATION

RAMAH - 12/22/2010 to 12/20/2011

 CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Rich Crawford, Eric Rasbach, Jake Renquist, Chris Hertneky, Hunter Vassau, Mike Kostrzewa, and Jacqueline Hess

DATA DETAILS

December 22, 2010 to December 20, 2011:

The anemometer tower was installed on December 22, 2010 and removed on December 20, 2011. The site was located on a ranch about 8.3 miles NSW and 8.8 miles N of Ramah. The tower was located on a flat spot on the top of a hill. The wind was expected to blow from the N and S 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 30m. The certification for the anemometer is as follows:

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.

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: An NRG #110S temperature sensor with a radiation shield was added to the data logger on 2/1/2010 at 12:20 p.m.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.50. 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 m/s and the temperature was below 0°C for 6 hours or more was deleted.
2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 degrees and the temperature was below 0°C 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:

• Ramah_3900_2010_1222_to_2011_1220_Summary_Report.pdf
• Ramah_3900_2010_1222_to_2011_1220_without_data_validation.windog
• Ramah_3900_2010_1222_to_2011_1220_without_data_validation.txt
• Ramah_3900_2010_1222_to_2011_1220_with_data_validation_offset_170.windog
• Ramah_3900_2010_1222_to_2011_1220_with_data_validation_offset_170.txt

Final Wind Resource Summary

Highlights of the final wind resource to date 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.

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