Climate Change's Impact On Wind Power And Optimum Selection Of Wind Turbine

Wind power generation is one of the most sophisticated means of power generation in technology with best prospects for commercial development among the means in which new energy recourses is employed. However, its production is sensitive to global climate change.Climate change will significantly change the wind speed distribution and affect the power output of wind turbine. As two of the most important projects at the early stage of wind farm planning, wind resource assessment and the optimum selection of wind turbine are both carried out under a fixed weather pattern, however, the climate pattern is changing. As the wind power is proportional to the cubic wind speed, the change of wind speed induced by climate change will significantly affect the wind power of low Wind Speed areas. China is making great efforts to develop the wind power in low wind speed areas which located at load center, it is necessary to analyze the impact of climate change on the wind power and optimum selection of wind turbine on longer time scales in these areas.The meteorological observation data of the investigated station from 1973 to 2012 are analyzed. The Chi-square test, RMSE test and determination coefficient are utilized to identify the probability distribution of wind data by applying Weibull and Rayleigh distribution. It is uncovered that the probability of wind data can be fitted well with the Weibull distribution. The paper improved the estimation method of power production based on the Weibull distribution and power curve of a typical wind turbine. Finally, the long-term trends of wind resource(including wind speed, wind power density and capacity factor) of those investigated stations were analyzed with the linear regression method. The simulations reveal that wind resource of the inland weather stations is greatly influenced by climate change and decreased significantly on longer time scales. However, the weather stations which near coastal seemed immune from climate change.The optimum selection of wind turbine is for the selected turbine to work in high efficient zone and produce the best economic benefit. The article makes some innovation on the current study and presented a new comprehensive selection method. Considering the results of wind turbine selection which under the fixed weather pattern is uncertain, the impact of climate change on optimum selection of wind turbine of each site have been analyzed by applied the new comprehensive selection method. The simulation results show the optimum selection of wind turbine of the inland weather stations is greatly influenced by climate change,while those stations which near coastal seemed immune from climate change.