Assessment of wind energy potential in Lebanon

In this study, wind characteristics are analyzed using data collected wind speed for five weather stations in Lebanon and available for at least one year (2 years for Klaiaat, 10 years for Les Cedres, 7 years for Daher El Baydar, 2 years for Quaraoun, and 1 year for Marjyoun). The Weibull distribution is used to model the wind speed at these five locations in Lebanon. Shape parameters and scale were estimated using four methods, the variability of the method, the method of standard deviation, the method of power density and the Moroccan method. The purpose of this article is to compare the methods of assessment of wind energy potential, as well as evaluation of the power density at different altitudes. It was observed that the estimates using the method of power density gave the best overall fit of the data distribution of the wind. Shape parameters and scale vary considerably over a month. The annual variation of the power density varies between 2397 W/m(2) and 784 W/m(2) at Daher El Baydar and Les Cedres for the maximum and minimum values. The extrapolation of the wind speed and the Weibull parameters increases with altitude and thus the power density increases.