Hourly Wind Production

I ran a simulation for a 300 MW wind project in a high wind area and in sorting the hourly wind data to produce a load duration curve, I found that the peak hourly production throughout the year never exceeded 252 MW (although the 250 MW level was reached over 900 times during the year.  

It seems the peak hourly production should be closer to 300 MW during high wind times (at least a few hours out of the year)

Can you explain this anomaly?

Hi Ron,

There are several things that could be causing the wind farm's peak output to be less than its nameplate capacity:

• The turbine layout and wake model parameters on the Wind Farm page could reduce the wind farm's power output, depending on how far apart the turbines are.
• Losses on the Losses input page.
• Curtailment or interconnection limit on the Grid Limits page.

In addition, the annual degradation rate on the Lifetime and Degradation page reduces the wind farm's total annual output in Years 2 and later for cash flow calculations. Degradation is set to zero by default.

Best regards,
Paul.

Paul;
Thank you for your quick response.
I agree that some losses are to be expected, and I've accounted for that.  I'm just screening some sites, using the SAM's default settings for a 300 MW project, assuming 3 MW turbines.  The default losses shown are about 11% (absent mtce/curtailment).  That is why I'm puzzled by the 17% losses (250 MW from a 300 MW project) during the peak wind hours.

I'm just wondering what I'm missing?
Ron R

Hi Ron,

If you would like me to review your .sam file to see if I can explain those results, please attach it to a reply.

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Ron,

Thank you for emailing your file.

As an estimate of what to expect, I used the following information:

Wind farm size: 303 MW
Total loss: 17.8%
Expected peak output: 303 MW * ( 1 - 17.8%/100% ) = 250 MW

The sum of the various losses on the Losses input page is 16.7%, and there's an additional 1.1% loss from the wake model. You can display all of the loss values on the Data Tables tab of the Results page and export them to a spreadsheet:



Best regards,
Paul.