WIND RESOURCE DATA ANALYSIS FOR MOSOBOHARENA WIND FARM

Ethiopia has been relied much on hydroelectric plants for of its power demand. But Hydro
power is exposed to the effects of climatic change. Problem of water level fluctuation is
increasing continuously in most of the hydropower dams resulting from the climate
change. As the demand for safe and clean electricity increases due to industrial
development and population growth in the country, expanding wind energy industry is
greatly helpful to Ethiopia to meet its growing massive energy demand and to promote
sustainable development. The country has enormous potential to generate electricity from
wind.
This study investigates the wind energy resource potential for Mosobo-Harena using
different statistical methods and software. MS-Excel and MATLAB programs were used
to generate time-series graphs of wind speed and direction , frequency distributions of
wind speeds (wind speed histogram) and a wind rose for 12 continuous months from
January 1/2007 to December 31/ 2007. And WAsP (The Wind Atlas Analysis and
Application Program) was used for predicting wind resources, wind atlas generation,
develop site wind resource map, identify wind potential sites, sitting of wind turbines and
estimating farm annual energy production (AEP). The analysis was conducted based on
one year 10 minutes interval wind speed collected data from mast at Mosobo-Harena at
heights of 10m and 40m above ground level. This site has an average wind speed of 5.47
m/s and annual wind power density is 161w/m2 at mast height of 10m