COLORADO ANEMOMETER LOAN PROGRAM
 

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PADRONI - 12/30/2011 to 5/9/2012

LOCATION DETAILS
Latitude:
N 40° 45.0828’ or N 40° 45’ 4.97"
Longitude:
W 103° 9.326’or W 103° 9’ 19.55"
Survey Meridian:
Colorado, Sixth Principal Meridian
Township:
9 N
Range:
52 W
Section:
15
Elevation:
1,239 m (4,065 ft)
Datum:
WGS 84
Tower Type:
Earth Turbines Tilt-Up
Tower Height:
34 m (112 ft)
Vane Offset (deg):
+111° (built into raw data)
Direction Basis:
Magnetic North
Mag. Declination:
7° 55' E, changing by 8' W/yr
Symphonie S/N:
3090203931
Site No.:
4003

CSU ALP Install Team: Andrew Costinett, Jacqueline Hess, Christian Knapp, and Mike Kostrzewa

DATA DETAILS

December 30, 2011 to May 9, 2012:

The anemometer tower was installed on December 30, 2011. The site is located in Logan County in a field on top of a large hill about 2 miles SSE of the town of Padroni. The terrain is a rough pasture, with good access to the wind from all directions except from the southeast, where a copse of trees and house/garage are located about 400 feet from the tower location.

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

  • Anemometers
    1. 34 m (111 feet) on an NRG 60" standard boom
    2. 34 m (111 feet) on an NRG 60" standard boom
    3. 19.86 m (65.17 feet) on an NRG 60" standard boom
  • Wind Vane
    1. 34.8 m (114.2 feet) heading 166° 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 feed into an NRG Symphonie data logger. The certifications for the anemometers are as follows:

NRG #40C Calibrated Anemometers
Anem. No.
1
2
3
Height
34 m
34 m
20 m
Model No.
1900
1900
1900
Serial No.
1795-00183424
1795-00183426
1795-00183413
Calibration Date
9/28/11 6:51:10 p.m.
9/28/11 7:13:24 p.m.
9/28/11 4:27:09 p.m.
Slope
0.766 m/s per Hz
0.765 m/s per Hz
0.763 m/s per Hz
Offset
0.37 m/s
0.38 m/s
0.38 m/s

The data logger generates wind reports for each day. Using the Symphonie Data Retriever software, each day's data is 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
Padroni_4003_SDR_2011_1231_to_2011_0509.zip

It is important to note that these are the raw files include the offsets for the wind vanes so no compensation is required.

Experienced users may also wish to download the site file used to process the raw data with the Symphonie Data Retriever software. You can find the site file here.

From the collected data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed for entire data collection period using Windographer 2.4.6. Since the data set contains data for two or more wind speed sensors at different heights above the ground, Windographer considered the wind shear relationship between different wind speed sensors to extrapolate the data to different heights. A best fit using the power law profile was chosen to extrapolate the data.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed and the 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 2 hours or more was flagged and ignored when calculating the wind resource statistics.
  2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 degrees at a temperature less than 0°C for 2 hours or more was flagged and ignored when calculating the wind resource statistics.

The summary report, the combined data files, and the Windographer files (with and without the data quality analysis) are given below:

Interim Wind Resource Summary

Highlights of the wind resource to date at this site are shown below:

Data Properties
Data Set Starts:
12/31/2011 0:00 MST
Data Set Ends:
5/9/2012 08:00
Data Set Duration:
4.3 months
Length of Time Step:
10 minutes
Elevation:
1,239 m (4,065 ft)
Mean air density (kg/m³):
1.091
Wind Power Coefficients
Power Density at 50m:
460 W/m²
Wind Power Class:
4 (Good)
Wind Shear Coefficients
Power Law Exponent:
0.138
Surface Roughness:
0.0181 m
Roughness Class:
0.90
Roughness Description:
Fallow field

 

Variable
Height above ground
A: 34m (111.5 ft.)
B: 34m (111.5 ft.)
20m (65.2 ft.)
10-min. Mean wind speed (m/s)
6.692 6.703 6.226
10-min Median wind speed (m/s)
5.730 5.670 5.250
10-min Standard deviation (m/s)
4.123 4.191 3.971
10-min Min. wind speed (m/s)
0.37 0.38 0.38
10-min Max wind speed (m/s)
27.96 27.66 26.68
Weibull k
1.723 1.698 1.670
Weibull c (m/s)
7.534 7.540 6.998
Mean power density (W/m²)
401 410 340
Mean energy content (kWh/m²/yr)
3,512 3,590 2,978
Mean turbulence intensity
0.143 0.145 0.155
Energy pattern factor
2.467 2.510 2.600
Possible records
18,768 18,768 18,768
Valid records
18,768 18,768 18,768
Missing records
0 0 0
Data recovery rate (%)
100 100 100

 

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

 

Wind Frequency Rose at 35 meters

 

Wind Energy Rose at 35 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 6.70 16.6 7.7 2.2 19,000 28.9
Bergey Excel-S
6.7
10
34 6.70 7.8 5.6 2.6 22,600 25.8
Bergey XL.1
2.5
1
34 6.70 3.0 12.1 0.3 3,000 34.0
Southwest Skystream 3.7
3.7
1.8
34 6.70 14.8 0.0 0.6 5,300 33.4
Southwest Whisper 500
4.5
3
34 6.70 15.9 9.7 1.1 9,400 35.6
Northen Power NW100 21m
21
100
37 6.79 14.2 0.0 26.6 232,700 26.6
GE 1.5s
70.5
1,500
64.7 7.42 17.6 9.9 412.3 3,612,100 27.5
GE 2.5xl
100
2,500
75 7.61 12.3 10.6 866.2 7,587,800 34.6
GE 3.0s
90
3,000
70 7.52 18.9 4.4 729.3 6,389,000 24.3
Vestas V90 - 1.8 MW
90
1,800
80 7.70 12.1 11.4 694.9 6,087,300 38.6
Vestas V90 - 2.0 MW
90
2,000
80 7.70 12.2 11.1 741.0 6,490,800 37.0
Vestas V90 - 3.0 MW 109.4 dB(A)
90
3,000
80 7.70 11.2 3.4 892.4 7,817,500 29.7
Vestas V100 - 1.8 MW
100
1,800
80 7.70 12.7 12.4 763.6 6,688,900 42.4
Vestas V100 - 2.0 MW
100
2,000
80 7.70 12.3 4.3 798.3 6,993,300 39.9
Vestas V100 - 2.6 MW
100
2,600
75 7.61 11.6 5.6 896.2 7,850,500 34.5
Vestas V112 - 3.0 MW
112
3,075
84 7.76 11.8 11.4 1,185.7 10,386,800 38.6

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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