Investigation and analysis of wind turbines optimal locations and performance in Iraq
Mohammed Bashaer, Oday I. Abdullah, Amani I. Altmimi
Abstract
Wind energy is one of the most important types of renewable energy resources in the world. The wind energy is considered friendly to the environment and relatively inexpensive power. These advantages are considered the main reasons to select wind turbines to produce the electricity in the world. An accurate analysis of the wind data is considered the main key to select the optimal location and the suitable wind turbine based on the estimated power and cost. In this research paper, a new program was built and then developed based on MATLAB to analyze deeply the wind energy in the selected locations in Iraq. MATLAB Graphical User Interface (GUI) was used to present the developed program of "WIND ENERGY ANALYSIS". This software has the ability to analyze the wind speed, processing the missing data and find the correlation coefficients, besides plot the results of this analyis (wind and Rose). Furthermore, the software presented the full details about the parameters of the Weibull distribution based on two different methods (Standard Deviation Method and Energy Pattern Factor) in order to select the optimal wind turbine in the specific site depending on the minimum cost per kWh or maximum capacity factor generated from the wind energy system.