Economic Assessment of Water Pumping Systems Using Wind Energy Conversion Systems in the Southern Part of Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed the wind energy potential and the economic viability of the water pumping systems supplied by various wind turbine models. The two-parameter Weibull probability density function was employed to analyze the wind speed data collected between 1971 and 2007 by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency for seven meteorological stations, in the southern part of Nigeria, namely Asaba, Calabar, Ogoja, P-Harcourt, Uyo, Benin-City, and Warri. The performance of small to medium size commercial wind turbine models of various rated powers ranging from 5.2 kW to 250 kW were investigated and economic evaluation of the wind energy in all the sites was performed using the levelised cost method. The results showed that the annual mean wind speeds range from 3.09 m/s at Warri to 4.15 m/s at Calabar, while the corresponding annual mean power densities vary from 23.17 W/m2 to 56.22 W/m2. Our analysis demonstrated that the wind resource in all the sites considered fall into Class 1 wind resource category, hence, they can marginally be considered for small scale standalone system for electricity generation. The cost of energy production per kWh for the selected sites varies between $0.090 at Ogoja and $2.118 at Uyo. Moreover, the cost of water delivered varies from $3.33 per cubic metres in Calabar to $54.96 per cubic metres in Uyo.