Publication Date
1978
Abstract
This paper is an investigation of the economic feasibility of small scale (1 to 70 kw) wind energy conversion systems (WECS). It can be shown that the wind system productivity and therefore the relative cost of the product which it produces is completely dependent on the wind regime under consideration. The mean wind speed, standard deviation, and wind profile are the most significant parameters to be used in the investigation of cost of product from a wind system. The purpose of this work is not to find an optimum wind system, but to give the reader enough information to make an informed decision as to whether or not a wind system configuration could meet the particular need under consideration; the wind system appropriate to a residential home owner is quite different from that for a dairy farmer, for example. The decision ultimately boils down to the cost of usable energy, i.e., cents/kwhr of those kwhrs thatcan be used. Various wind machines will be designed and priced. They will then be superimposed onto different wind regimes modeled by the Weibull distribution for a first approximation of the cost of product at that site using that machine. It will be clear that the same machine will have different cost effectiveness at different sites, and that the cost-ofuseful-energy-product will vary, site-to-site, for the same machine.
Pages
137