Feasibility Study to Install Wind Farm in Bab Al-Hawa, Irbid, Northwest of Jordan

Abstract

The utilization of wind energy for power generation purposes is becoming increasingly attractive and gaining a great share in the electrical power production market worldwide. This research was considered a feasibility study of wind energy farm in Bab Al-Hawa, Irbid. The average wind speed in the site is (6.5 m/s). Data have been collected, which includes the average monthly wind speed for 10 years, but by HOMER software to create the hourly wind speed of a representative year is created in order to build Weibull distribution and to calculate the energy generated output of the project. This project contains the construction of 33 wind turbines in 3.11 km square. Each turbine has a capacity of 900 kW rated power and the total rated capacity is 29.7 MW. The capacity factor was found equal to 37.1% which means the amount of utilization of the turbine capacity. The results show that the turbines work 87,286 h/yr, and the total energy generated is 96.548559 GWh/yr. from the 33 wind turbine s installed. The initial cost of this project is equal to 80.5243 M$ and the Payback period is 7 years. We have taken into account the environmental impact such as CO 2 emissions into consideration. CO 2 reductions by using wind energy instead of coal-fired plant are equal to 67124.4 tons, and the CO 2 emissions reduction using wind power instead of fuel oil power plant is 5343.4 tons. This research shows that wind farm at Bab Al-Hawa with a capacity of 29.7 MW, 33 wind turbine s , 900 kW each ha s been feasible with a cost of energy 4 cents/kWh.