Assessment of wind energy potentiality at Kudat and Labuan, Malaysia using Weibull distribution function

The wind resource is a crucial step in planning a wind energy project and detailed knowledge of the wind characteristic at a site is needed to estimate the performance of a wind energy project. In this paper, with the help of 2-parameter Weibull distribution, the assessment of wind energy potentiality at Kudat and Labuan in 2006-2008 was carried out. "WRPLOT" software has been used to show the wind direction and resultant of the wind speed direction. The monthly and yearly highest mean wind speeds were 4.76 m/s at Kudat and 3.39 m/s at Labuan respectively. The annual highest values of the Weibull shape parameter (k) and scale parameter (c) were 1.86 and 3.81 m/s respectively. The maximum wind power density was found to be 67.40 W/m(2) at Kudat for the year 2008. The maximum wind energy density was found to be 590.40 kWh/m(2)/year at Kudat in 2008. The highest most probable wind speed and wind speed carrying maximum energy were estimated 2.44 m/s at Labuan in 2007 and 6.02 m/s at Kudat in 2007. The maximum deviation, at wind speed more than 2 m/s, between observed and Weibull frequency distribution was about 5%. The most probable wind directions (blowing from) were 190 and 269 at Kudat and Labuan through the study years. From this study, it is concluded that these sites are unsuitable for the large-scale wind energy generation. However, small-scale wind energy can be generated at the turbine height of 100 m. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.