FEASIBILITY STUDY OF MICRO-SCALE WIND POWER GENERATION FOR RURAL ELECTRIFICATION IN POLONNARUWA AREA

Abstract

Wind energy is one of the most promising alternative renewable energy technologies at present to sustain the increasing energy demand, whereas fossil fuels have negative effects on the environment. Moreover, the fossil is directly related to air pollution, land and water degradation. Despite significant progress made in power generation using large-scale wind turbines recently, domestic-scale wind turbines have received less attention, which have immense potential for standalone power generation. In this paper, micro-scale wind power generation in the Polonnaruwa area was investigated. The technical and economic feasibility of tower-mounted micro-scale standalone wind turbine installation was conducted. The potential of micro-scale wind power generation was statistically analyzed. The average wind speed data of a three-seasonal intervals of two years (2019 and 2020) was collected and analyzed to find the potential of wind power generation in the specified area. The Weibull probability distribution was applied to calculate the wind speed distribution at different heights. Therefore, the annual wind power potential of the area and the energy production of the selected wind turbine were estimated. Study results show that installation of the wind turbine at 10m hub height for this particular area gave better performance of annual energy production, capacity factor and, carbon savings. Therefore, a 500 W turbine with low cut- in wind speed of 2 m/s, was selected as the most appropriate micro scale wind turbine which can be installed at the site under study.