An Economic Study of a Wind Energy Project Using Different Sources of Wind Data

Abstract

     In this study, a preliminary economic feasibility study of the project of wind power at the site of Al-Shehabi (Wasit-Iraq) was conducted using measured wind data at altitudes of 10, 30, 50 and 52 m per 10 minutes. For the purpose of comparison, data from NASA were used at the same location at 50 m height. The lowest unit cost of electricity from wind energy was found to be 0.028 $/Kwh and 0.0399 $/Kwh by using the standard methodologies of Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) equation and Net Present Value (NPV) procedure, respectively. Furthermore, RETScreen software was used to perform the economic prefeasibility study of a proposed wind farm. The study concludes that this site is economically feasible if a wind farm with 5.0 MW of ten wind turbines (EWT DW54) was established, with an NPV of $11,309,956, after-tax IRR of 24.7%, a simple payback period of 6.1 years, and a capacity factor of 38.34%.  Finally, this wind farm development will result in a reduction in greenhouse gases of 31876 tCO2 per year. The sensitivity and risk analysis were performed and guarantee the safety of specified financial input parameters values.