Wind Data Collection and Analysis in Kumasi
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Date
2012
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Abstract
This research collected wind resource data on the campus of Kwame Nkrumah university of Science and Technology (KNUST) from March 1, 2011 to September 30, 2011 mainly for educational, informational and research purposes. The wind monitoring system which was equipped with an anemometer (an NRG # 40 Maximum cup anemometer), a wind vane (an NRG # 200P wind vane) and a data logging unit (Wind Explorer™) was placed in a building environment (precisely on the rooftop of a 3-storey classroom block belonging to the College of Engineering) to collect wind resource data at 20 m above ground level.
The WAsP Climate Analyst Program was used to handle a three- month time-series wind data stored on a DataPlug. The Stata Software was used to generate bar and line graphs which depict variations in wind speeds and wind directions. The WAsP Climate Analyst program was used to generate time-series graphs of wind direction and wind speed, frequency distributions of wind speeds (wind speed histogram) and a wind rose for the three continuous months of July, August and September, 2011.
An online version of a Speed Calculator developed by Meteotest of Switzerland (for Suisse Eole, also of Switzerland) was used to generate the wind velocity profile of the site. The average wind speed for the seven month period was calculated as 2.2 m/s. The month of August recorded the highest monthly average wind speed of 2.6 m/s with the wind predominantly blowing from North-West due to the nature of the site. Thus, the prevailing wind direction of the selected site was North-West. The months, March and September recorded the lowest monthly average wind speed of 2.0 m/s. The month that recorded the highest gust was April with 24.9 m/s from 200°. This thesis obtained the probability density distributions of the time-series wind speeds recorded at the site as well as the energy contents of the various wind speeds.
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A thesis submitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Kumasi in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering