Wind speed description and power density in northern Spain

Cristina Herrero-Novoa, Isidro A. Pérez, M. Luisa Sánchez, Ma Ángeles García, Nuria Pardo and Beatriz Fernández-Duque

Energy, 2017, vol. 138, issue C, 967-976

Abstract: Wind resources are increasingly being investigated as a clean alternative for generating energy. This paper analyses the daily wind speed recorded at 46 automatic weather stations located in Navarre, northern Spain, in 2005–2015. Key points are the surface density of stations and the range of time that ensure a faithful depiction of wind speed together with surface calculations from image analysis and correlation with height. Different statistics were used. Median wind speed at 10 m was low, about 3.3 m s−1 and its interquartile range was narrow, about 2.3 m s−1. Nearly half the surface shows a median wind speed above 3.0 m s−1. The method of moments was employed to calculate the parameters of the Weibull distribution. Around half of the surface presented a shape parameter above 2.25 and the scale parameter was above 4 m s−1 for nearly 41% of the region. Although wind resources are not suitable for wind turbine applications in most of the region, since the wind speed is low in low-lying areas, about 12% of the region is suitable for stand-alone applications and, moreover, a substantial part of the region, around 23%, presents satisfactory wind resources for the installation of wind turbines.

Keywords: Wind statistics; Weibull distribution; Correlation; Surface distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:138:y:2017:i:c:p:967-976

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2017.07.127

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