Assessment of wind energy potentiality at Kudat and Labuan, Malaysia using Weibull distribution function

The wind resource is a crucial step in planning a wind energy project and detailed knowledge of the wind characteristic at a site is needed to estimate the performance of a wind energy project. In this paper, with the help of 2-parameter Weibull distribution, the assessment of wind energy potentiality at Kudat and Labuan in 2006–2008 was carried out. “WRPLOT” software has been used to show the wind direction and resultant of the wind speed direction. The monthly and yearly highest mean wind speeds were 4.76 m/s at Kudat and 3.39 m/s at Labuan respectively. The annual highest values of the Weibull shape parameter (k) and scale parameter (c) were 1.86 and 3.81 m/s respectively. The maximum wind power density was found to be 67.40 W/m2 at Kudat for the year 2008. The maximum wind energy density was found to be 590.40 kWh/m2/year at Kudat in 2008. The highest most probable wind speed and wind speed carrying maximum energy were estimated 2.44 m/s at Labuan in 2007 and 6.02 m/s at Kudat in 2007. The maximum deviation, at wind speed more than 2 m/s, between observed and Weibull frequency distribution was about 5%. The most probable wind directions (blowing from) were 190° and 269° at Kudat and Labuan through the study years. From this study, it is concluded that these sites are unsuitable for the large-scale wind energy generation. However, small-scale wind energy can be generated at the turbine height of 100 m.

Research highlights
► The highest average diurnal wind speeds are observed at 3 p.m. The diurnal maximum average wind speeds were found to be 5.55 m/s and 4.75 m/s at Kudat and Labuan respectively.
► The yearly average wind speed at Kudat was 3.37, 3.36 and 3.00 m/s for the year 2006, 2007 and 2008 respectively. At Labuan the average wind speeds were 3.50, 3.81 and 2.67 m/s for the year 2006, 2007 and 2008 respectively.
► The maximum wind power density for the two sites has been found 67.40 W/m2 and 50.81 W/m2 at Kudat and Labuan respectively.
► It has been found a 25% deviation between the observed frequency and Weibull frequency distribution. However, this is happened at the wind speed less than 2 m/s. At the large wind speed more than 2 m/s, the deviation is 5%.
► The most probable wind directions (blowing from) are 190° and 269° at Kudat and Labuan respectively through the study years.