Micro-Scale Wind Resource Assessment for Off-Grid Electrification Projects in Rural Communities. A Case Study in Peru

Abstract

The proper identification of locally available renewable energy resources are key issues in the project design of off-grid rural electrification systems to improve effectiveness and long-term sustainability. In recent decades, a number of computer tools have been created to improve micro-scale wind resource assessment and their use is a de-facto standard, for instance, in wind farm design. However, these tools are not used in off-grid rural electrification projects in remote areas in developing countries because some characteristics of the projects are out of models' operational limits (limited and inaccurate information available and steep terrains) and their applicability and performance in those contexts has not been studied. The aim of this study is to evaluate and optimize the performance of a micro-scale model for its application for resource estimation in rural electrification projects, considering their specific characteristics. The analyses are based on data collected in two communities in the Andean mountains of Peru. Sensitivity analyses are carried out to evaluate the influence of the main input data on assessment accuracy. Although limitations and constraints of these projects, the results show that the model performance is good and the resulting resource map is accurate in the typical area of a community project. Thus, analyzed micro-scale model and procedure prove to be suitable for wind resource studies at the community scale; its use in the design of the electrification project of Alto Peru (Peru) is given as an example.