Economic feasibility of development of wind power plants in coastal locations of Saudi Arabia - A review

The study presents monthly variations of wind speed, cumulative frequency distribution (CFD) profiles of wind speed, monthly and yearly amount of energy generated from the 75 MW wind farms (50 m hub-height) at different coastal locations of K.S.A., cost of generating energy (COE, $/kWh), capacity factor (%), etc. The CFD indicates that the wind speeds are less than 3 m/s for 45%, 53%, 41%, and 52% of the time during the year at Al-Wajh, Jeddah, Yanbu and Jizan respectively. This implies that wind electric conversion systems (WECS) will not produce energy for about 41-53% of the time during the year. The annual energy produced by 75 MW wind farms (50 m hub-height) has been found to be 107,196, 81,648, 135,822, and 80,896 MWh at Al-Wajh, Jeddah, Yanbu and Jizan respectively. The cost of wind-based electricity by using 600 kW (50 m hub-height) commercial WECS has been found to be 0.0536, 0.0704, 0.0423, and 0.0711 US$/kWh for Al-Wajh, Jeddah, Yanbu and Jizan respectively. Also, attempt has been made to determine the capacity factor (CF) of wind-based power plants, the CF has been found to vary from 12% to 21% for different locations of the Kingdom.