Reference Manual for the System Advisor Model's Wind Power Performance Model

This manual describes the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's System Advisor Model (SAM) wind power performance model. The model calculates the hourly electrical output of a single wind turbine or of a wind farm. The wind power performance model requires information about the wind resource, wind turbine specifications, wind farm layout (if applicable), and costs. In SAM, the performance model can be coupled to one of the financial models to calculate economic metrics for residential, commercial, or utility-scale wind projects. This manual describes the algorithms used by the wind power performance model, which is available in the SAM user interface and as part of the SAM Simulation Core (SSC) library, and is intended to supplement the user documentation that comes with the software.