Extraction of the inherent nature of wind using wavelets

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.Due to the availability of multi-megawatt wind turbines, ease of installation and maintenance, economic compatibility and commercial acceptance, the power of the wind is being used globally for both grid-connected and off-grid applications. The power of the wind is intermittently available due to the fluctuating nature of the wind and hence needs to be understood well. Therefore, its variability in time and spatial domains was studied. The present work utilized daily mean values of wind speed from different meteorological stations spread over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in conjunction with wavelet transform and fast Fourier transform power spectrum techniques to understand the dynamic nature of the wind at nine stations. The study found that wind speed changed by ±0.6 to ±1.6 knots over a long period of about 10 years depending on the locations. The long-term mean wind speed of 5.6, 8.9, 6.25, 8.1, 6.0, 7.1, 6.0, 8.6 and 7.3 knots were obtained at Abha, Dhahran, Gizan, Guryat, Hail, Jeddah, Riyadh, Turaif and Yanbo, respectively. The annual fluctuation in wind speed is larger (±1.3 to ±3.0 knots) and more regular at Abha, Dhahran, Guryat and Yanbo, while smaller (±0.7 to ±1.1 knots) and less regular at Gizan, Hail, Jeddah, Riyad and Turaif, with the greatest (±3.0) and smallest (±0.7) at Guryat and Gizan, respectively.