Assessment of wind power, wind exponent, local air density and air turbulence intensity for an isolated site

This paper presents the assessment of wind power, wind exponent, local air density and air turbulence intensity for an isolated site in Saudi Arabia. Overall average wind speeds of 4.7, 5.4 and 5.7 m/s were recorded at 20, 30 and 40 m above ground level (AGL), respectively. At 40 m AGL, the wind speed was found to be above 5.5 m/s for most of the time except between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. The wind shear exponent obtained using the entire data set was 0.346 while it was 0.327 and 0.348 for the data sets of 2006 and 2007, respectively. The overall mean turbulence intensity values over the entire period of data collection were 0.173, 0.146 and 0.137 at 20, 30 and 40 m AGL, respectively. The monthly average minimum energy values of 698, 810 and 907 MWh were generated in November while maximum values of 978, 1081 and 1164 MWh were generated in June corresponding to hub heights of 60, 80 and 100 m, respectively.