Application of the Weibull Distribution to Estimate the Volume of Water Pumping by a Windmill

Abstract

Given the steady increase in use of alternative energy sources to supply part of the energy demand of the world, and considering that Mexico has enough wind re-sources to produce all the electricity required by the country, in this work, it is car-ried out the development of a system of wind resource assessment to determine the volume of water that a windmill pumping system can provide in a specific area. To this end, it has developed a computer program for wind resource assessment by measurements of wind speed, direction, temperature, barometric pressure and rela-tive humidity. Measuring equipments were mounted in a wind measurement tower of 10 m high, within the premises of the University of Quintana Roo which is located along the coast. Until this day, there are records over a period of five months of the variables of wind speed, wind direction, temperature, relative humidity and atmos-pheric pressure. These variables were used for statistical calculations using the Wei-bull distributions. To give a better use of the calculated data, they were applied to the evaluation of a Pumping System.