Wind speed in Nigeria ranges from 4.0 to 5.12 m/s in the
extreme northern part of the country, while 1.4–3.0 m/s in the
southern Nigeria; just like South Africa. The latter has a wind
speed that ranges from 4.0 to 5.0 m/s for the majority of the
coastal regions, but increasing approximately to 8.0 m/s in some
mountainous areas [34–38]. This shows that wind speeds are
generally weak in the southern part except at the coastal regions
and offshore locations. A study carried out by the Energy Commis-
sion of Nigeria (ECN) reveals that total exploitable wind energy
reserve at 10 m height may vary from 8 MWh/yr in Yola to
51 MWh/yr in the mountainous area of Jos, and could reach as
high as 97 MWh/yr in Sokoto [39]. A potential estimate of wind
speeds for 10 selected sites in Nigeria render the speed between
3.6 and 5.4 m/s [40]. These results when compared with the
results obtained from calculated wind speed using Climatic Model
Mainz, gives a discrepancy of –4.3% to 4.1%; which lies within the
acceptable limit of error. The results of these 10 sites are presented
in Table 6 and the estimated gross energy yield of the sites by
wind turbine is shown in Table 7. High wind energy potentials for
some selected states of Nigeria are depicted in Table 8. Assuming a
medium generation capacity of 5 MW/km2 (a) and 30% capacity
factor (b), only 1% of effective wind area of these selected states
has a potential to generate 50,046 MWh/yr of electricity [40,41].
Table 9 shows detailed potentials and wind energy densities at
25 m height, of 22 selected states of the country.