Techno-Economic Viability Assessment of Onshore Wind Power Generation in Southwest Nigeria

Abstract

There is currently no commercial or mini-grid wind power generation in Southwest Nigeria, and previous research efforts generally consider the region non–feasible for a wind farm.  A 20-year atmospheric meteorological data including wind speed was acquired for 23 evenly distributed stations strategically located in the mainland involving at least 3 stations in each of the 6 states that make up the zone based on historical and real time records from high resolution satellite, ground atmospheric data measurements from research institutions, weather records of private organizations, and individual sources. The wind energy data from satellite was compared and found to corroborate with other sources, given negligible variance. The viability of wind power generation was evaluated by applying empirical wind energy principles, proven technical and commercial feasibility measurement tools, such as the Techno-Economic Renewable Energy Viability Index (TEREVI), as well as HOMER and MATLAB Simulink simulations based on a 100KW direct drive wind turbine configurable with other energy generation technologies for mini-grid power generation. About 4.3% of southwest Nigeria has strong potential for commercially viable wind power generation at 10m AMSL and 87% at 50m AMSL altitudes, respectively. At 10m AMSL, the mean wind speeds range from 0.99m/s at Okitipupa to 6.29m/s at Obafemi Owode, with an average of 2.45m/s peaking between June and September, by which Obafemi Owode is the only site that passed the 3.5m/s threshold for commercial wind farm electricity generation. The wind energy potential generally shows strong localization with overall year – round 50mAMSL average of 3.76m/s while 75% of the year have values above 3.5m/s threshold ranging from 3.54m/s to 4.46m/s with Okitipupa, Ondo Town, Shagamu, and Osogbo being the only sites having below commercial threshold value while Obafemi at 7.2m/s has the highest.