Performance assessment of commercial wind turbines for low wind speed regions

Abstract

Wind resource assessment of 12 sites in low-wind regions of Pakistan was conducted, focusing on wind data characteristics and wind speed distributions. A comparative performance evaluation of Power Law (PL) and Logarithmic Law (LogL) for interpolation (at 60 m) and extrapolation (at 80 m) of wind speed was performed. Performance analysis of over 500 commercial wind turbines was carried out in terms of Net Capacity Factor (NCF). The wind power density of all sites at 50 m, ranges from 33 to 244 W/m2, categorizing wind power class as either poor or marginal. The performance evaluation shows that PL and LogL perform better for interpolation and extrapolation respectively, at the same height. A turbine with cut-in and rated speed of 1.0 and 10 m/s respectively, achieves maximum NCF across all sites due to lowest cut-in speed. The NCF of the turbine for marginal wind power class sites ranged from 53% to 58%.