Wind Resource Assessment at Illizi Site in the Algerian Sahara, with Environmental Analysis

This paper gives an investigation of wind characteristics of Illizi site, which is an isolated region situated in the southeastern part of Algerian Sahara. For this purpose, 11 years of measurements hourly data in terms of wind speed and wind direction recorded at 10m a.g.l. were used. For the temporal analysis, the Weibull distribution were used to study the monthly, annual and diurnal wind potential, while the WAsP program were used to establish the wind map and to find the windiest area for wind farm energy production simulation at this desert region. Given that the major part of southern regions in Algeria have an isolated grid, powered by gas and diesel turbines, this study proposes an environmental analysis which assess the quantity of C02 not emitted into the atmosphere during a life cycle of a wind power plant of 10 MW rated capacity, composed by 5 wind turbines of 2 MW from Vestas manufacturer, installed in this region. The analysis results for the meteorological station at a height of 10m indicate that the studied site has an appreciable wind potential with a mean wind speed equal to 5.76m/s and a mean power density of 196 W/m2, with the east as dominant direction. Regarding the temporal analysis, it is shown that the monthly mean wind speed ranges from a minimum of 5.1m/s in December to a maximum value of 6.1m/s in May. In addition, it was given that diurnal wind speed analysis gives a good potential in the daytime, while the wind potential is relatively calm during the night. Furthermore, the wind map given at 67 m, shows a mean wind speed which varies from 4 to 11 m/s over the whole studied region. Finally, the wind power plant energy production simulated at a windy site in the region of Illizi gives an annual energy production equal to 40.120 GWh, which leads to avoid the emission of 1754.47 Ton of CO2 equivalent.