TITLE:
Feasibility Study to Install Wind Farm in Bab Al-Hawa, Irbid, Northwest of Jordan
AUTHORS:
Mohammad Al-Smairan, Omar Al-Nhoud
KEYWORDS:
Wind Farm, Bab Al-Hawa, HOMER Software, Energy, Capacity Factor
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Mechanical Engineering,
Vol.9 No.1,
February
27,
2019
ABSTRACT: The utilization of wind energy for power generation purposes is becoming
increasingly attractive and gaining a great share in the electrical power
production market worldwide. This research was
considered a feasibility study of wind energy farm in Bab Al-Hawa, Irbid. The
average wind speed in the site is (6.5 m/s). Data have been collected, which
includes the average monthly wind speed for 10 years, but by HOMER software to
create the hourly wind speed of a representative year is created
in order to build Weibull distribution and to calculate the energy generated
output of the project. This project contains the construction of 33 wind
turbines in 3.11 km square. Each turbine has a capacity of 900 kW rated power
and the total rated capacity is 29.7 MW. The capacity factor was found equal to
37.1% which means the amount of utilization of the turbine capacity. The
results show that the turbines work 87,286 h/yr, and the total energy generated
is 96.548559 GWh/yr. from the 33 wind turbines installed. The initial cost of this project is equal to 80.5243 M$ and the
Payback period is 7 years. We have taken into account the environmental impact such as CO2 emissions into consideration. CO2 reductions by using wind energy
instead of coal-fired plant are equal
to 67124.4 tons, and the CO2 emissions reduction using wind power
instead of fuel oil power plant is 5343.4 tons. This research shows that wind
farm at Bab Al-Hawa with a capacity of 29.7 MW, 33 wind turbines, 900
kW each has been feasible with a cost of energy 4 cents/kWh.