Wind Resource Assessment of a Coastal Site for Offshore Wind Power Generation in India

Wind power plants are an important source of renewable based electric power generation in the power system. Onshore wind power plants have shown that wind energy can be successfully used for power generation. This paper focuses on modeling of wind resource based on Weibull probability density function and assessing the suitability of an offshore wind farm site based on wind power density (WPD). The novelty of this work is the application of kernel density estimation based probability distribution to a particular month wind speed data where the wind resource is having two peaks. It is observed at site under study that the most prevalent wind direction is southwest and it is followed by northeast direction. During June month, the wind power density is 1086.15 W/m² and 1056.42 W/m² at 100 m and 80 m heights, respectively. From May to September months, the WPD is more than 500 W/m². Wind power density is greater than 216 W/m² in every month except for the month of April where wind power densities are 109.79 W/m² and 104.33 W/m² at 100 m and 80 m heights respectively. Wind resource assessment shows that Dhanushkodi coastal offshore site has good wind profile for offshore wind farms.