High Winds at Nygårdsfjell

Abstract

Wind energy in cold climate offers challenges that include among others, the icing on the turbine blades that affects the power output of the turbines. We investigate the presence of high winds at the Nygardsfjell wind farm that is situated in north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. The data is taken from three 2.3 MW Siemens wind turbines (SWT-2.3-93) that were installed at Nygardsfjell during the fall of 2005. There are total of 185 high winds events detected consisting of 1737 hours during the observation period May 2008 until April 2009. Out of these 1737 hours of high winds, 269 hours occurred during May 2008 until October 2008 and 1468 hours occurred during November 2008 until April 2009 that is 84.5% of total high winds hours. That shows the majority of high winds events occurring during the colder periods. The ten leading high winds events showed the presence of wind speeds ranging from 16 m/s to 19 m/s with maximum up to 24 m/s. The analysis established the existence of high winds at Nygardsfjell during colder times.