An Evaluation of Wind Energy Potential in the Northern and Southern Regions of Nigeria on the Basis of Weibull and Rayleigh Models

Abstract

This paper presents an evaluation of wind energy potential in the northern and southern region of Nigeria on the basis of Weibull and Rayleigh models. The aim of this study is to know which of the locations in the regions would have more wind power density where wind energy conversion system (WECS) could be installed for electricity generation in Nigeria with excellent percentage of clean energy. From the analysis of the wind speed data collected from Nigeria meteorological station, Abuja at 10m height from years (1990 – 2006) the locations in northern region of Nigeria that were found quite viable for electricity generation are (Jos, Kano, Sokoto and Maiduguri) while for the southern region of Nigeria are (Lagos and Enugu). These locations were found to have wind power density above 100W/m2. The Weibull model was found to be more applicable in estimating the power density because it returns a lower percentage error than the Rayleigh model. Probability density function in the northern region has a peak value of 1.01795 and 0.2937 in Bauchi for both Weibull and Rayleigh respectively while for the southern region the probability density function has a peak value for Weibull as 0.8347 in Calabar and Rayleigh as 0.2341 in Rivers southern region of Nigeria.