[RE-wrenches] Site Evaluation for a Wind Turbine Farm

Fri Jun 19 13:30:44 PDT 2009

If installing a small wind turbine for site assessment is what you are
intending to do, you will need to keep it up for at least one year, just
like an anemometer.  In that case, why not just put up an anemometer tower
with multiple levels of instrumentation, so you can extrapolate data that
can be used for any wind turbine, rather than take the performance inherent
in a specific small wind turbine, then try to extrapolate that data to use
with anything else?  

You neglected to mention if the site was for a single residential
installation or a potential multiple turbine, large scale wind farm.  If a
wind farm, you will need multiple anemometer towers for 2-3, possibly 5
years.  A single residential installation, coupled with net metering and
some state level grant money (which CA has) would be well served by a
professional wind site assessment, not a temporary wind turbine
installation.  We use the average of four different data sets, coupled with
an actual site visit and some wind turbine production modeling.  

If you have to have actual onsite data, install an anemometer system and
leave it up for a year.  It will probably be less costly and far more
accurate than a tower of the same height with a small turbine on it.

Roger Dixon
Certified Wind Site Assessor
Distributor & Installer of Solar & Wind Energy Systems 
Skylands Renewable Energy, LLC
908.337.2057 cell
908.730.6474 fax
roger.dixon at skylandsre.com
www.skylandsre.com

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-----Original Message-----
From: re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org
[mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of Peter
Parrish
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 4:14 PM
To: 'RE-wrenches'
Subject: [RE-wrenches] Site Evaluation for a Wind Turbine Farm

I have been asked by one of my students, who is also a renewable energy
developer, about site evaluation for wind. I told him that he needs to move
beyond downloading "maps" showing the m/s contours at some altitude (at a
fairly coarse scale), and get a small turbine on the actual site and take
some actual data (at the appropriate height). 

I think I read somewhere that there are companies that will provide that
service for a fee. They truck the system out to the site, erect it, install
the data logging, and come back at some point in time and break down the
system and truck it home.

They share the data with us and possibly recommend products compatible with
the wind data.

If this is true, could folks give the contact info for these companies? I
would really like to work with an engineering company, which doesn't have an
agenda to sell us product, but if that won't wok, I'll settle for "pre-sales
technical support".

- Peter

Peter T. Parrish, President
California Solar Engineering, Inc.
820 Cynthia Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90065
CA Lic. 854779, NABCEP Cert. 031806-26
peter.parrish at calsolareng.com  
Ph 323-258-8883, Mobile 323-839-6108, Fax 323-258-8885

-----Original Message-----
From: re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org
[mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of
jeffc at villagepower.com
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 1:00 PM
To: re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org
Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Cali Breeze Wind Turbines?

I'm away on vacation until June 29th.  I will return your email then.

Best,  Jeff
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