COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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JOES - 7/20/2011 to 10/13/2012

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 39° 38.387’ or N 39° 38’ 23.22"
Longitude:
W 102° 37.532’or W 102° 37’31.92"
Survey Meridian:
Colorado, Sixth Principal Meridian
Township:
5 S
Range:
47 W
Section:
3
Elevation (ft.):
4,203 ft (1,281 m)
Datum:
WGS 84
Tower Type:
Earth Turbines Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
34 m (112 ft)
Vane Offset (deg):
+132° (built into raw data)
Direction Basis:
True North
Mag. Declination:
7° 36' E, changing by 8' W/yr
Symphonie S/N:
309020086
Site No.:
9302

 

CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Michael Lichtbach, Scott Little, Christian Knapp, Mark Goudreault, Jacqueline Hess, and Mike Kostrzewa (taking picture).

DATA DETAILS

July 20, 2011 to October 13, 2012:

The anemometer tower was installed on July 20, 2011 and removed on October 13, 2012. The site was located on a small rise in a pasture in Yuma County. This spot has good access to wind from all locations.

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

  • Anemometers
    1. 34 m (111.5 feet) (Anemometer A) heading 5 ° on an NRG 60" standard boom
    2. 34 m (111.5 feet) (Anemometer B) heading 262° on an NRG 60" standard boom
    3. 20 m (65.6 feet) heading 314° on an NRG 60" standard boom
  • Wind Vane
    1. 35.3 m (116 feet) heading 312° on an NRG 60" standard boom with the null point facing toward the tower

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

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

NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometers
Anem. No.
1 (A - North)
2 (B - South)
3
Height
34 m
34 m
20 m
Model No.
1900
1900
1900
Serial No.
1795-00164536
1795-00152535
1795-00164535
Calibration Date
11/24/10 1:23 p.m.
4/30/10 4:39 p.m.
11/24/10 1:13 p.m.
Slope
0.758 m/s per Hz
0.757 m/s per Hz
0.760 m/s per Hz
Offset
0.40 m/s
0.40 m/s
0.39 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
Joes_9302_SDR_2011_0720_to_2012_1013.zip

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

The temperature sensor, the wind vane, and the anemometer at the 20m level were incorrectly connected to the data logger when initially installed. The connections were correctly wired on September 14, 2011 at 15:10 hours.

An analysis of the wind resource at this site was developed using Windographer 2.4.6 and a data quality analysis was performed on the data. This data was flagged for icing in two ways:

  1. Any wind speed data (from any anemometer) where the wind speed was less than 0.5 m/s at a temperature less than 0°C for 3 hours or more was flagged and removed from the wind resource analysis calculations
  2. Any wind direction data (from any wind vane) where the wind direction varied by less than 2 degrees at a temperature less than 3°C for 3 hours or more was flagged and removed from the wind resource analysis calculations.

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:

Final Wind Resource Summary

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

Data Properties
Data Set Starts:
7/20/2011 16:30 MDT
Data Set Ends:
10/13/2012 10:00
Data Set Duration:
15 months
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Elevation:
4,203 ft (1,281 m)
Mean air density (kg/m³):
1.067
Wind Power Coefficients
Power Density at 50m:
374 W/m²
Wind Power Class:
3 (Fair)
Wind Shear Coefficients
Power Law Exponent:
0.231
Surface Roughness:
0.339 m
Roughness Class:
3.01
Roughness Description:
Many trees

 

Variable
Height above ground
A: 34m (111.5 ft.)
B: 34m (111.5 ft.)
20m (66 ft.)
10-min. Mean wind speed (m/s)
6.653 6.724 6.038
10-min Median wind speed (m/s)
6.510 6.640 5.800
10-min Standard deviation (m/s)
3.087 3.185 2.948
10-min Min. wind speed (m/s)
0.40 0.40 0.34
10-min Max wind speed (m/s)
29.76 29.42 27.50
Weibull k
2.246 2.178 2.125
Weibull c (m/s)
7.492 7.559 6.802
Mean power density (W/m²)
270 282 214
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
2,366 2,475 1,874
Mean turbulence intensity
0.134 0.131 0.153
Energy pattern factor
1.721 1.746 1.830
Possible records
64,903 64,903 64,903
Valid records
64,899 64,899 56,846
Missing records
4 4 8,057
Data recovery rate (%)
99.99 99.99 87.59

 

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

 

Wind Frequency Rose at 34 meters

 

Wind Energy Rose at 34 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 34m - Sensor A: Frequency (%) vs. Wind Speed

 

Probability Distribution Function at 34m - 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
%
Bergey Excel-R
6.7
7.5
34 6.69 12.1 4.8 2.4 20,900 31.8
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
34 6.69 5.3 2.8 2.6 22,500 25.6
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
34 6.69 1.9 6.8 0.4 3,100 35.7
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
34 6.69 10.9 0.0 0.7 5,800 36.6
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
34 6.69 12.0 5.8 1.1 10,000 38.1
Northen Power NW100 21m
21
100
37 6.84 10.5 0.0 27.8 243,900 27.8
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
64.7 7.96 12.3 6.7 501.3 4,391,600 33.4
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
75 8.30 8.1 9.5 1,091.7 9,563,200 43.7
GE 3.0s
90
3,000
70 8.14 12.9 1.7 874.9 7,664,200 29.2
Vestas V90 - 1.8 MW
90
1,800
80 8.46 8.0 11.3 884.4 7,747,500 49.1
Vestas V90 - 2.0 MW
90
2,000
80 8.46 8.0 10.9 945.4 8,281,800 47.3
Vestas V90 - 3.0 MW 109.4 dB(A)
90
3,000
80 8.46 7.1 1.5 1,113.1 9,751,000 37.1
Vestas V100 - 1.8 MW
100
1,800
80 8.46 7.5 15.3 987.2 8,648,100 54.8
Vestas V100 - 2.0 MW
100
2,000
80 8.46 7.6 3.2 1,033.1 9,050,400 51.7
Vestas V100 - 2.6 MW
100
2,600
75 8.30 7.6 3.5 1,119.5 9,807,200 43.1
Vestas V112 - 3.0 MW
112
3,075
84 8.58 7.7 12.1 1,510.6 13,232,800 49.1

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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