The objective of a site suitability assessment is to select the most appropriate wind turbine for a given site with respects to annual production and turbine loads.
A first site suitability study is typically made early in the project before a turbine supplier is involved. The objective at this stage is to select an appropriate wind turbine for the conditions at site to base the evaluation of the project on. This is normally done by:
- calculating the wind regime at the individual turbine locations. The most important parameters for loads are: mean and extreme wind speed, turbulence, wind shear and vertical inflow angles.
- using a generic turbine response model to calculate component loads.
- comparing the load at site to the design loads of the wind turbine based on IEC classification.
At the turbine procurement stage, the turbine supplier will conduct detailed calculations of the expected component loads based on the local wind conditions. As the supplier has more knowledge about the true design loads of the wind turbine (which are typically higher than the IEC requirements for at least some components), these calculations will be the most accurate source for life time estimation of the wind turbine. At this stage the role of Modern Energy is ensure that the turbine supplier uses the appropriate input data in their load calculations, and performs adequate sensibility investigations to incorporate the uncertainty of the input parameters. This is an important step in ensuring that the project developer risk is kept at acceptable levels.