Investigation of wind characteristics in the southern region of Algeria

Before an investment in wind turbines takes place in a given site, it is important to know several fundamental properties such as wind behavior, availability, continuity, and probability in the proposed region. To make decisions with those properties, statistical and dynamic characteristics of wind of the site should be found out using wind observations and statistical wind evaluation. In this paper a preliminary examination of wind potential of two sites in the southern region of Algeria is dealt with. Wind measured data of a period of 18 years are collected from these two weather stations. Wind speed is studied to find the adequate probability distribution which fits the best the measured data. By performing the chi(2) test we find that the Weibull distribution function is the most adapted. The corresponding parameters were estimated using two methods. These are the quick and the least squares methods. Although that the first method is more practical, the obtained results by both methods can be used to estimate the Weibull parameters for both sites and good agreement is obtained with the measured data. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.