Assessment of fresh water wind resources on Lake Erie

Abstract

Wind farms are better been built at locations with higher wind resource potentials. As the appropriate locations become fewer and fewer to build onshore wind farms, significant attention has been drawn to the wind energy industry to build offshore wind farms. The terrain effect has fewer effects offshore than onshore since the sea level is flat and no artificial buildings are built there. The coastal line of the Great Lakes is one of those areas that not only has great wind energy potential but is also near the high population coastal cities which is short of the land surface. This article makes the detailed statistical analysis of 1-year offshore wind data in Lake Erie from a Light Detection and Ranging system placed on a water intake crib 4 miles away from near the coast of Cleveland. For comparison purpose, a nearby onshore wind monitoring station’s data have also been analyzed to study the wind and power characteristics. Specifically, the statistical analysis of the data includes Weibull shape and scale factors, the monthly average of the wind speed, turbulence intensity, and wind power density. In addition, two site-matching commercial wind turbines with 50 (Vestas® 39) and 80 m (Vestas® V90) hub heights have been chosen to estimate the 1-year energy output. The result shows great preponderances of building offshore wind farms than building onshore wind farms. This study gives guidance to the cost-benefit analysis to build the offshore wind farms in Lake Erie.