A Study of the Wind Potential in Climatic Zones of Chad

Abstract

This paper focuses on the assessment of wind energy potential in the three climatic zones of Chad: the Saharan (north), the Sahel (center) and the Sudan (south) zones. For each zone, three representative meteorological locations were chosen and assessed based on satellite data provided by NASA. The data comes from MERRA (Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications) and covers the period 2005–2014. The wind speed frequency distribution of locations was found by using Weibull distribution function. From this statistical data analysis, we found that the wind regime is different in the three regions. It is higher in the Saharan region (with annual mean wind speed of 5.78 m/s) followed by the Sahel (4.32 m/s) and Sudanian (3.7 m/s) regions. There are two distinct seasons in Chad: the dry and the rainy seasons with varying periods, with respect to the regions (2 months of rain in the Saharan zone vs 7 months in the Sudanian zone). For all regions the mean wind speed is higher in the dry season. Diurnal variations of mean wind speed show two regimes characterized respectively by high values in the early morning and the night and low values during the day. The corresponding power density was 193 w/m2, 76.15 w/m2 and 29.0 w/m2, resp. for the Saharan, Sahelian and Sudanian regions. The wind regimes are globally stable with dominant directions North-East (for Saharan region), East (Sahelian), South-Southwest (Sudanian).