Wind speed and power characteristics for Jubail industrial city, Saudi Arabia

This paper presents the wind characteristics and resource assessment of the largest industrial base in the Middle East (Jubail industrial city) using measured hourly mean wind speed data at 10, 50 and 90 m above ground level (AGL) from 2008 to 2012. At respective heights, the mean wind speeds were found to be 3.34, 4.79 and 5.35 m/s. At 50 and 90 m AGL, the availability of wind speed above 3.5 m/s was more than 75%. The prevailing wind direction was from the north-west. The local wind shear exponent calculated using measured wind speed values at three heights was found to be 0.217. The mean wind power density values at measurement heights were 50.92, 116.03 and 168.46 W/m2 respectively. The comparison of energy output from five commercially selected wind turbines of rated power ranging from 1.8–3.3 MW showed that the most efficient wind turbine is 3.0 MW rated power. The annual energy production from this turbine was estimated to be 6285 MWh with a plant capacity factor of 25%.