Wind power potential assessment for three buoys data collection stations in the Ionian Sea using Weibull distribution function

ABSTRACT

The present article utilizes wind measurements from three buoys data collection stations in Ionian Sea to study the wind speed and power characteristics using the Weibull shape and scale parameters. Specifically, the site dependent, annual, and monthly mean patterns of mean wind speed, Weibull parameters, frequency distribution, most probable wind speed, maximum energy carrying wind speed, wind power density and wind energy density characteristics have been analyzed. The Weibull distribution was found to represent the wind speed distribution with more than 90% accuracy, in most of the cases. Moreover, the correlation between the percentages of times the wind speed was above cut-in-speed and the measured mean wind speed for the three selected sites, as the correlation between the aforementioned percentages and the scale parameter c were examined and were found linear. At all these sites, no definite increasing or decreasing trends in annual mean wind speed values could be detective over the data reporting period. The mean values of wind speed, scale parameter, most probable wind speed, maximum energy carrying wind speed, wind power and wind energy density values showed higher values during winter time and lower in summer time in Pylos and Zakynthos. Moreover, Pylos and Zakynthos were found to be the best sites from wind power harnessing point of view.

KEYWORDS:

• Maximum energy carrying wind speed
• most probable wind speed
• Weibull distribution
• wind energy density
• wind power density

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Research Institute of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research---Poseidon Team for the attainment of the access to the Centre’s buoys database.

Notes

¹ http://www.gwec.net/index.php?id=30&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=279&tx_ttnews[backPid]=4&cHash=ada99bb3b6

² http://www.geos.co.uk/services/ocean/Wavescan.asp