Extraction of the inherent nature of wind using wavelets

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.Due to the availability of multi-megawatt wind turbines, ease of installation and maintenance, economic compatibility and commercial acceptance, the power of the wind is being used globally for both grid-connected and off-grid applications. The power of the wind is intermittently available due to the fluctuating nature of the wind and hence needs to be understood well. Therefore, its variability in time and spatial domains was studied. The present work utilized daily mean values of wind speed from different meteorological stations spread over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in conjunction with wavelet transform and fast Fourier transform power spectrum techniques to understand the dynamic nature of the wind at nine stations. The study found that wind speed changed by ±0.6 to ±1.6 knots over a long period of about 10 years depending on the locations. The long-term mean wind speed of 5.6, 8.9, 6.25, 8.1, 6.0, 7.1, 6.0, 8.6 and 7.3 knots were obtained at Abha, Dhahran, Gizan, Guryat, Hail, Jeddah, Riyadh, Turaif and Yanbo, respectively. The annual fluctuation in wind speed is larger (±1.3 to ±3.0 knots) and more regular at Abha, Dhahran, Guryat and Yanbo, while smaller (±0.7 to ±1.1 knots) and less regular at Gizan, Hail, Jeddah, Riyad and Turaif, with the greatest (±3.0) and smallest (±0.7) at Guryat and Gizan, respectively.dc201

Performance evaluation of cup-anemometers and wind speed characteristics analysis

The objective of the present work is to study the performance of cup-anemometers installed at different heights on a 40 m tall wind mast over an approximate period of 55 months between September 13, 2005 and May 09, 2010. The performance of co-located cup anemometers has been analyzed by calculating the annual mean, median, standard deviation, tower distortion factor (TDF), scatter factor (SCF), and developing linear correlations between the co-located sensors. The study showed that the performance of sensors did not deteriorate much with time but slightly higher values of TDF were obtained with passage of time. The annual mean wind speeds, the median values and the standard deviations were almost the same during different years and were comparable with co-located sensors at each height. The SCF values were found to be increasing with decreasing height of wind speed measurements. Finally, a total of 16 wind turbines of 2 MW rated capacity each were used to find the most suitable wind turbine for the location under investigation.Research Institute of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals,Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/renene2017-02-28hb201

Extraction of the inherent nature of wind speed using wavelets and FFT

Due to technological advancement, availability of multi-megawatt wind turbines, ease of installation and maintenance, economic compatibility and commercial acceptance, wind power is being used globally for both grid-connected and off-grid applications. The wind power is intermittently available due to the fluctuating nature of the wind and hence needs to be understood well. Its variability was studied in this paper both in time and spatial domain. The present work utilized daily mean values of wind speed from different meteorological stations spread over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in conjunction with wavelet transform and fast Fourier transform power spectrum techniques to understand the dynamic nature of the wind at nine stations. The study found that wind speed changed by ± 0.6 to ± 1.6 knots over a long period of about 10 years depending on the locations. The long-term mean wind speed of 5.6, 8.9, 6.25, 8.1, 6.0, 7.1, 6.0, 8.6 and 7.3 knots was obtained at Abha, Dhahran, Gizan, Guriat, Hail, Jeddah, Riyadh, Turaif and Yanbu, respectively.Research Institute of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy-for-sustainable-development/hb2014ai201