Determination of rated wind speed for maximum annual energy production of variable speed wind turbines

Ahmad Sedaghat, Arash Hassanzadeh, Jamaloddin Jamali, Ali Mostafaeipour and Wei-Hsin Chen

Applied Energy, 2017, vol. 205, issue C, 789 pages

Abstract: Rated wind speed is recognized as one of the key design factors affecting the overall power production of a wind turbine. No formulation is found in literature to relate the rated wind speed to the wind turbine power curves and the annual energy production (AEP). This paper aims to formulate the suitable rated wind speed for variable speed wind turbines continuously operating at maximum power coefficient for maximizing AEP. A capacity value is introduced which relates AEP to an integral function of the rated wind speed using Weibull distribution of wind speeds and the constant power coefficient of variable speed wind turbines. The capacity values are calculated and presented versus rated wind speeds at different wind classes and Weibull parameters. From the results, the suitable values for the rated wind speeds for maximizing AEP are found which are considerably higher than normally used values and varied from 2 to 5 times of the annual mean wind speed. For instance, for the mean annual wind speed of 4m/s and the shape factors of k=1.2, 1.6, 2.0, 2.4, 2.8, 3.2, and 3.6, the converged rated wind speeds are Vrate=20, 19, 14, 12, 10, 10, and 9m/s, respectively. On this basis, new charts for rated wind speeds are introduced for selecting suitable wind turbines for maximizing AEP. It is concluded that for some selected wind turbines operating at lower rated wind speeds, the AEP may fall below about 43% of actual achievable AEP when employing higher recommended rated wind speeds. Hence, it is shown that selecting the right rated wind speed wind turbines has great impact on overall energy production of a wind site.

Keywords: Capacity value; Variable speed wind turbine; Rated wind speed; Weibull distribution; Wind energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261917310978
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:205:y:2017:i:c:p:781-789

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.08.079

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().