Evaluation of high wind speed site for large-scale wind energy generation: Case study of Slangkop, South Africa

The South Africa renewable energy such as solar, wind and ocean has enormous potential in contributing to the nation energy portfolio and security, reducing independency on fossil fuel generations and helping to mitigate the increasing emission of green house gases. South Africa has a dynamic-economic development and rapid growing populate of about 49 million. Alongside with the economic growth and increasing populate, a significant increase were observed in the energy consumption in the past few years. In the attempt to meet the increasing energy demand, the wind resource at Slangkop site is evaluated for utility scale energy generation. In this paper, an hourly measured wind speed data for the year 2010 at 50 m and 60m heights were statically analyzed using the Weibull distribution. The annual mean wind speed recorded were 12.04 m/s and 12.38 m/s at 50 m and 60 m heights, respectively. The Weibull distribution together with the wind resources were used to estimate the wind power density at the considered heights. The site matching of the wind generators at 50m and 60m heights were conducted based on the known wind power class. In addition, the capacity factor and the energy outputs of the selected 1.3MW and 2.0MWwind generators were estimated on hourly basis.