Wind Energy Potential at Elevated Hub Heights in the US Midwest Region
Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 4
Abstract
The US Midwest successfully generates wind power at a hub height of and the use of tall towers can reduce the wind energy cost. However, the lack of reliable wind data and production estimates at elevated heights hamper this effort. In this paper, wind resources and annual energy production (AEP) are studied using wind data up to above ground to estimate and validate AEP as a function of hub height at multiple sites. The AEP results show that energy production can increase by about 10% when the hub height is increased to . It also suggests that the optimal elevated hub height for a given region is not constant. A suitable site-specific height is desirable to minimize the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). Wind information from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Wind Integration National Dataset (WIND) Toolkit is used as an alternative for estimating AEPs at elevated hub heights. This approach produced somewhat conservative results, confirming its use for wind farm planning purposes when measured wind data are not available.
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Data Availability Statement
The wind resource data to validate the AEP increases and the files revealing the findings of this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.
Acknowledgments
This study was partially funded by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the DOE under Award No. DE-EE0006737. The authors are very grateful to the Iowa Energy Center for providing the wind resource data in Iowa and Eolos Wind Research Station at the University of Minnesota for providing additional wind data measurements.
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 13, 2020
Accepted: Jan 21, 2021
Published online: Jun 10, 2021
Published in print: Aug 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Nov 10, 2021
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