PROGRAM INFORMATION

ALMA - 6/17/2009 to 9/12/2009

 CSU ALP Install Team (from left): Mike Kostrzewa, Nick Wagner, Todd MacDonald, Jake Renquist, Derrick Benallie, Nathan Davis, and Doug Hopper (taking picture).

DATA DETAILS

June 17, 2009 to September 12, 2009:

The anemometer tower was installed on June 17, 2009. The site is located in Park County south of the Town of Alma, just south of the town's sewage treatment ponds. The site is located just off Colorado Highway 9 which leads to Hooiser Pass, with Mount Bross about 5 miles to the NW of the site and Mount Silverheels about 5 mile NE of the site. There are 20-30 feet pine trees located SW and SE from the site, but the terrain is generally smooth at the site. The winds are expected to be strong up and down the valley NW and SE.

All data is collected using an NRG #40 Calibrated Anemometer and NRG #200 Wind Vane mounted on a tilt-up tower located at a height of 20m. The certification for the anemometer is as follows:

This equipment feeds into an NRG Wind Explorer data logger. All data plugs will be sent to the Colorado ALP at Colorado State University for analysis. The data plug files and text versions of these files are given below.

It is important to note that these are the raw files without any compensation for offset. It is also important to note that the temperature was not recorded during this period.

Using this data, an analysis of the wind resource report was developed using Windographer 1.45. For this data an offset of +165° was applied to the wind vane data. For this report, a validation analysis was performed on the data. This data was filtered two ways:

1. Any wind speed data where the wind speed was less than 1 mph for 3 hours or more was deleted.
2. Any wind direction data where the wind direction varied by less than 3 degrees over 6 hours was deleted

Windographer was then used to add in synthetic data to these intervals with suspect data. The combined data files (with and without the validation analysis), and the Windographer files (with and without the validation analysis) are given below:

• Alma_0639_2009_0617_2009_0912_without_data_validation.windog
• Alma_0639_2009_0617_2009_0912_without_data_validation.txt
• Alma_0639_2009_0617_2009_0912_with_data_validation_offset_165.windog
• Alma_0639_2009_0617_2009_0912_with_data_validation_offset_165.txt

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

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, allowing for losses of about 18%. 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.

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