Life cycle assessment and feasibility study of small wind power in Thailand

The Thai government’s implementation of its 10 year renewable energy plan was done to help increase energy independence and reduce emissions resulting from energy production. Due to Thailand’s wind regime, wind turbines which can operate in low wind speeds will be needed to meet this goal. Small wind turbines typically operate at higher efficiency in lower winds, and thus they might prove to be a good option for wind power production in Thailand. Incorporating small wind turbines into power production can be difficult because of the perception of high investment costs and because their net benefit has not been adequately studied. Using a functional unit of producing 50 kWh per month for 10 years we conducted a Life Cycle Assessment comparing the global warming potential (GWP), embodied energy (EE), and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of four small wind turbines (≤20 kW), a diesel generator, and the Thai Grid. When analyzing GWP of the turbines it was found that they had a lower overall GWP than the diesel generator when in areas with reasonable wind resources. The same is true for embodied energy. Interestingly, in most available wind speed categories in Thailand the LCOE for wind turbines was lower than for the diesel generator. However, neither could compare to the LCOE of the Thai Grid, except in the areas with the highest average wind speeds (7.0 -­‐9.4 m/s). With this in mind, it is clear that the most important factor when considering wind power generation is the wind regime available in an area. Because of the increased cost relative to the Thai grid, implementation of wind turbines in Thailand was not found to be economically viable. This could be changed given lower costs for turbines and/or government incentives