Economic feasibility of development of wind power plants in coastal locations of Saudi Arabia – A review

S.M. Shaahid, L.M. Al-Hadhrami and M.K. Rahman

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2013, vol. 19, issue C, 589-597

Abstract: Climate change and depletion of natural resources are serious issues that have potential impact on the economic and social development of countries. In this perspective, the governments world-wide are mobilizing initiatives to exploit renewable energy sources to mitigate increasing demand of energy, volatile fuel prices, and environmental concerns. Renewable energy (wind/solar) based power system is a nature-friendly option for power production to foster sustainable development challenges. In the present study, the economic feasibility of development of 75MW wind power plants (wind farms) in the coastal locations of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (K.S.A.) has been studied/reviewed by analyzing long-term wind speed data. Attention has been focused on four coastal locations (Al-Wajh, Jeddah, Yanbu and Jizan) covering the west coast. In general, long-term data indicates that the yearly average wind speed of K.S.A. varies from 3.0 to 4.5m/s at 10m height. The wind farms simulated consist of different combinations of 600kW commercial wind machines (50m hub-height). NREL's (HOMER Energy's) HOMER software has been employed to perform the techno-economic assessment.

Keywords: Wind speeds; Commercial wind machines; Wind farms; Hub-heights; Cost of energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032112006727
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:rensus:v:19:y:2013:i:c:p:589-597

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2012.11.058

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().