Performance Analysis of Wind Turbines at Sites in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa

摘要

Wind energy, like others renewable energies is environmentally friendly and if use would contribute significantly to greenhouse gas effects reduce and improvement of the ecosystem and climate change. Currently wind energy is more and more interesting source of renewable energy attracting researchers and investors. South Africa being identified as one of the countries with higher expectation of wind in Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper targeted the production of electricity using the new generation of wind turbines at two sites where the wind speed data are collected since October 2015 in KwaZulu-Natal Province. The Vestas V90-1.8 wind turbine and the Vestas V90-2.0 wind turbine are used to assess the wind energy conversion into electric energy for the two sites. With little details known about the wind regime at WM12 and the WM13 sites, the Rayleigh probability density function (pdf) is used to determine the statistics of wind speeds at those sites. The simulation results show that the V90-1.8 perform much better in both sites than the V90-2.0 dispute the difference in rated power. The economic analysis is not considered in this present article.