Wind power potential assessment for seven buoys data collection stations in Aegean Sea using Weibull distribution function

Abstract

This paper utilizes three hourly measured values of wind speed and direction from seven buoys data collection stations in Aegean Sea to study the wind speed and power characteristics applying the Weibull shape and scale parameters. Specifically, the site dependent, annual and monthly mean patterns of mean wind speed, Weibull parameters, frequency distribution, most probable wind speed, maximum energy carrying wind speed, wind power density and wind energy density characteristics have been studied. The Weibull distribution was found to represent the wind speed distribution with more than 90% accuracy in most of the cases. Slightly decreasing trends were observed in annual mean wind speed values at Lesvos and increasing at Mykonos. The mean values of wind speed, scale parameter, most probable wind speed, maximum energy carrying wind speed, wind power and wind energy density values showed higher values during winter time and lower in summer time. Mykonos was found to be the best site from wind power harnessing point of view. Moreover, the correlation between the percentages of times the wind speed was above cut-in-speed and the measured mean wind speed for the three selected sites and the correlation between the aforementioned percentages and the scale parameter c were examined and were found linear.