The Influence of Various Information Sources on the Wind Power Plant Technical and Economic Indicators Evaluation Results

Abstract

The reliability of evaluating the technical and economic indicators of a single wind power plant depends in the main on how reliable the input information on the wind resources at the wind turbine hub axis height is. The input data on wind resources can be obtained from various information sources (or databases). However, their data can differ significantly both in magnitude and the observation period, and can be given at different measurement heights, which are not always the same as that of the supposed wing turbine hub height. To recalculate the wind velocity for a particular height at the early design stages, various vertical wind profile (VWP) modeling dependences are used (for marine offshore areas, such recalculation is carried out in accordance with the recommendations given in IEC 61400-3). The paper considers an example of a single wind power plant located in the White Sea water area with geographical coordinates 69.274N, 35.250E and operating in parallel with a united power system. In application to this example, the results from analyzing the influence of the information source (ERA5 and NASA databases) and the VWP model (four models developed by the authors and one recommended by IEC 61400-3) on the wind power performance characteristics (average wind velocity) and the technical and economic indicators of a single wind power plant (annual electricity output and LCOE) are presented. Empirical dependences of the wind power performance characteristics and the technical and economic indicators of a single wind power plant on the VWP evaluation accuracy are given.