Economic analysis of wind electricity generation in the northern coast of Senegal

Abstract

The main target of this paper is to determine the seasonal features of the wind speed in the northwestern of Senegal and to assess the cost of annual energy output using wind turbines provided from several manufactures. The wind data used for this study were collected in four sites located in the northwestern coast of Senegal and cover the period of one year. The seasonal mean wind speed and the annual distribution curves were obtained by using the Weibull distribution function. A technical assessment of electricity generation from five big wind turbines which power is between 640 kW and 2000 kW and from six small wind turbines which power is between 250 W and 10 kW were carried out. The results obtained show that the lower cost (0.0265 €/kWh in Sokhar) was observed for the wind turbine Ecotècnia 62. The highest cost was 0.5103 €/kWh (in Gandon) observed for the technology of Alize. All wind turbines was better suited to the site of Sokhar with the highest capacity factor and the lowest cost of output energy.