Wind energy yield estimation
From the wind data analysis, winds mostly came from the north direction of Phangan island, so the 9
cases of power plants were placed north of Phangan. In a wind farm layout the wake effect of a turbine
can reduce the energy production of other turbines downstream. Such wake losses are reduced by
increasing the distance between wind turbines, but this in turn will increase the cost of the farm.
Balancing these aspects is done by optimizing the wind farm layout, to minimize the cost of energy and
maximize the energy production. The Annual Energy Production was calculated using WAsP9.0 as
shown in the Figure 7. For the very small power plants (C1-C3) the AEP was in the range of 0.64-2.21
GWh/year, while for small power plants (C4-C6) the range was 2.40-7.11 GWh/year. The triple cases of
small power plants (C7-C9) had the range 7.09-21.10 GWh/year. The wake loss was reduced with
increased distance between the wind turbines: in the layout case 15DX15D the wake loss was below 5 %,
as shown in Figure 8. The plant capacity factor of a wind energy conversion system was obtained, by
dividing the actual energy output during one year by the rated power and the number of hours in a year. It
is found that at 120m, the plant capacity factor is in the range of 0.96-2.8% as shown in Figure9.