Abstract

ABSTRACT
In this study, thirty one years (1980 – 2010) monthly wind speed was used to investigate the predictive ability of two-parameter Weibull distribution function for Warri and Port Harcourt located in the South – South region of Nigeria. The result in this study revealed that the Weibull function was found suitable for analyzing measured wind speed data and in predicting the wind power density in the locations under study. The monthly mean wind speed for Warri and Port Harcourt are 3.3433 ms-1 and 3.3062 ms-1 respectively. The annual values of the most probable wind speed and maximum energy-carrying wind speed are 3.3483 ms-1 and 4.2307 ms-1 respectively for Warri and 3.4342 ms-1 and 3.8783 ms-1 respectively for Port Harcourt. The two parameters of the Weibull statistics were found to lie between 2.5524≤k≤5.1206 for Warri, 3.6436≤k≤6.1214 for Port Harcourt and 3.0028≤c≤4.3221 for Warri, 2.7228≤c≤4.1074 for Port Harcourt. The results of the relationship between the monthly mean wind power density and mean wind speed revealed a perfect correlation for Warri and Port Harcourt with coefficient of correlation of 99.6 % and 99.4 % respectively. The estimated monthly mean wind power density for Warri and Port Harcourt are 23.8173 Wm-2 and 23.2159 Wm-2 respectively. This indicates that Warri has slightly higher better prospect for wind power generation as compared to Port Harcourt.

Key words: Keywords: wind power generation, weibull distribution function, most probable wind speed, maximum energy carrying – wind speed, wind power density.