OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Botha, Paul Cedric"

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The siting of wind turbines
(1988) Botha, Paul Cedric; Dutkiewicz, Ryszard Karol
In September 1984, Guy Roberts completed a report on the cost of wind energy in South Africa. His results showed that wind-energy in South Africa was uneconomical, but they suggest that at locations with higher wind speeds, the cost of wind power would approach the South African grid electricity cost. Knowing that locations with high annual average wind speeds would make the most suitable wind turbine sites, it was decided to investigate the wind enhancement, due to localized topography in such areas. Existing available wind data, together with previous studies on the South African wind energy potential suggested that the site worthy of investigation was in the vicinity of Cape Agulhas. A number of methods of ascertaining the wind potential over a given region were considered for investigating the area of interest. The two readily available techniques, physical and numerical modeling, were chosen to investigate the topographical wind enhancement. Previous work done on the siting of wind turbines using physical modeling was investigated prior to proceeding with the construction of and experimentation with a scale model. The utilization of two modeling techniques enabled the direct comparison of results.