Micro-siting Wind Resource Assessment and Near Shore Wind Farm Analysis in Pakpanang District, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand

Abstract

This paper presents the micro-siting wind resource assessment and near shore wind farm analysis in Pakpanang district, Nakhon Si Thammarat province, southern Thailand. One year of observed wind speed and wind direction data from a 120 m met tower installed near the shoreline are analyzed in order to investigate the monthly mean wind speeds and dominant wind directions at the site. The observed wind data is used to develop a 20 m resolution microscale map of the study area in order to analyze several configurations of near shore wind farms in the range of 10 to 90 MW. To this end, annual energy productions (AEP), wake effects, and theoretical capacity factors (TCF) are estimated using WAsP. Results show that the monthly mean wind speeds at 120 m above ground level are in the range of 3.3 to 5.3 m/s. The dominant wind at the site are from the NEE and SSW directions. In terms of the near shore wind farm analysis, the maximum net AEP is approximately 170 GWh/year (90 MW wind farm scenario), while the corresponding wind farm's wake loss is 3.65%, which corresponds to a 21.3% wind farm TCF.