Estimation of Weibull parameters and selection of optimal wind turbine for the development of large offshore wind farm

Abstract

In the present study, characteristics of wind velocity / speed at the two coastal regions ie. Zone-A and Zone-B of south India, were analyzed for developing a large offshore wind farm. The average data of wind velocity collected over a period of five years (2014-2018) was considered for the study. The weibull shape and scale parameters were evaluated using WAsP, openwind, maximum likelihood (MLH) and least square regression (LSR) algorithms. The wind velocity contributing maximum energy and the most frequent wind velocity were also determined using the four algorithmic methods. The study also analyzed the efficiency of these methods using correlation coefficient (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE). Of all the methods used, the LSR was found to be slightly better than the MLH, followed by openwind and WAsP methods. The suitable wind turbines were selected for the two sites from the commercially available wind turbines. The results show that Zone-B is more suitable for the development of an offshore wind farm than Zone-A coastal region of south India.