An assessment of Wind energy potential for electricity generation in southwest of Damascus, Syria

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the wind characteristics using actual wind data for Al-Hijana Site located on the south east of Damascus. Statistical analysis model was introduced to evaluate the wind energy potential. According to the power calculations done for the site, the annual mean wind density is 288.7 kW/m² at a height of 80 m above ground level. This station has a huge wind energy potential for electricity generation, especially during summer season, comparing with some regional countries. Al-Hijana Site was selected to install 50.5 MW using 35 commercial wind turbines “GE 1.5 sle”. This site has annual wind speed more than 8.01 m/s at 80 m height and enough area to locate these turbines. The estimated energy production using was 143 GWh/year. Furthermore, the production costs was found 5.1 € cent/kWh, which is a competition price at the wind energy world market.

Keywords: Wind Power, Wind speed, Weibull parameter’s, Wind turbine efficiency parameter, Electricity generation costs