Assessing the Wind Energy for Rural Areas of Vietnam

This study assesses the wind energy potential of a Bac-Lieu wind farm. The daily wind speed data using in this study was collected over a period of five years between 2006 and 2010. The designed wind farm capacity was 99 MW with 60 individual units of 1.65 MW Vestas wind turbines. The wind energy potential and wind farm economic analysis were carried out by WAsP 10.0 and RETScreen International software, respectively. The results showed that at 80 m height and 0.03 m roughness length, the mean wind speed and wind density were 7.2 m/s and 379 W/m 2 , respectively. The most wind energy came from East, Northeast, and North-Northeast directions. The wind farm produces 332.100 GWh/year, and prevents 232,470 tons/year of CO 2 equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) from entering the local atmosphere. In the economic analysis, the wind farm has total initial cost of $198,100,000 USD. Total annual savings and profit is about $39,558,901 USD. The simple payback and equity payback of the wind farm are around 5.2 years and 2.1 years, respectively. The wind farm being assessed is located at Vinh-Trach-Dong, Bac-Lieu, Vietnam.