Abstract
The objective of the present work is to study the performance of cup-anemometers installed at different heights on a 40 m tall wind mast over an approximate period of 55 months between September 13, 2005 and May 09, 2010. The performance of co-located cup anemometers has been analyzed by calculating the annual mean, median, standard deviation, tower distortion factor (TDF), scatter factor (SCF), and developing linear correlations between the co-located sensors. The study showed that the performance of sensors did not deteriorate much with time but slightly higher values of TDF were obtained with passage of time. The annual mean wind speeds, the median values and the standard deviations were almost the same during different years and were comparable with co-located sensors at each height. The SCF values were found to be increasing with decreasing height of wind speed measurements. Finally, a total of 16 wind turbines of 2 MW rated capacity each were used to find the most suitable wind turbine for the location under investigation.
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•Insignificant differences between annual mean wind speed, medians, and stand. dev. of collocated sensors.•Tower shading effect on cup anemometer wind measurements is conducted.•Annual energy yield and plant capacity factor from 16 wind turbines each of 2 MW rated power.•Excellent agreement is found between co-located sensors with R2 > 0.98 without tower shading effect.•Distortion, scattering and SD indicated insignificant deterioration sensors performance over 55 months.