Analysis of the upper-truncated Weibull distribution for wind speed

•Upper-truncated Weibull distribution is proposed to model wind speed.•Upper-truncated Weibull distribution nests Weibull distribution as special case.•Maximum likelihood is the best method for upper-truncated Weibull distribution.•Fitting accuracy of upper-truncated Weibull is analyzed on wind speed data.

Accurately modeling wind speed is critical in estimating the wind energy potential of a certain region. In order to model wind speed data smoothly, several statistical distributions have been studied. Truncated distributions are defined as a conditional distribution that results from restricting the domain of statistical distribution and they also cover base distribution. This paper proposes, for the first time, the use of upper-truncated Weibull distribution, in modeling wind speed data and also in estimating wind power density. In addition, a comparison is made between upper-truncated Weibull distribution and well known Weibull distribution using wind speed data measured in various regions of Turkey. The obtained results indicate that upper-truncated Weibull distribution shows better performance than Weibull distribution in estimating wind speed distribution and wind power. Therefore, upper-truncated Weibull distribution can be an alternative for use in the assessment of wind energy potential.