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Wind power calculation

nPro makes it possible to generate power generation profiles for wind turbines in hourly resolution. This page documents how these are calculated.

How are wind power profiles calculated?

In nPro, the wind speed at hub height of the wind turbine is calculated in a first step. For this purpose, the power law according to Hellmann is used:

whub=wref(hhubhref)aw_\mathrm{hub} = w_\mathrm{ref} \left(\frac{h_\mathrm{hub}}{h_\mathrm{ref}}\right)^a

Here, whubw_\mathrm{hub} is the wind speed at hub height, wrefw_\mathrm{ref} the measured wind speed, hhubh_\mathrm{hub} the hub height, hrefh_\mathrm{ref} the reference height at which the reference wind speed was measured, and aa the Hellmann coefficient. In a second step, the generation power of the turbine is calculated with power curves from manufacturer data. In Table 1 the power curve of the wind turbine Enercon E141 is illustrated.

Annual energy yield of an ENERCON E115-EP3 turbine
Figure 1: Annual energy yield of an ENERCON E115-EP3 turbine for the two size classes 4.2 MW and 2.99 MW.
Table 1: Power curve of the wind turbine Enercon E141.
Wind speed at hub heightPower generation
0 m/s0 kW
1 m/s0 kW
2 m/s22 kW
3 m/s104 kW
4 m/s260 kW
5 m/s523 kW
6 m/s920 kW
7 m/s1471 kW
8 m/s2151 kW
9 m/s2867 kW
10 m/s3481 kW
11 m/s3903 kW
12 m/s4119 kW
13 m/s4196 kW
14 m/s4200 kW
4200 kW
25 m/s4200 kW
25.1 m/s0 kW