Determination of utilizable wind energy for indoor ventilation in buildings across selected locations in Nigeria

Abstract

Presented is the analysis of hourly wind data for 15 stations across Nigeria acquired from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency mostly covering the period of five years for purposes of wind energy utilisation for indoor ventilation in buildings. Weibull’s distribution function was used for modeling of wind speed frequency distribution. The Weibull parameters, power law exponent, average wind speed, most probable wind speed, the fraction of time of observation for which wind speed equals or exceeds the most probable wind speed, energy pattern factor, and wind energy densities for the whole year and also for the hot season, between May and October when ventilation is most needed was computed for the heights 2 meters and 10 meters above the ground surface. In addition, a regression of the Weibull’s distribution scale factor against the mean wind speed was carried out to enable the estimation of wind data for stations not covered in this study using their respective short term measurements. Results suggest that seasonal variations have got little or no effect on wind data used and the Weibull’s scale factor c relates strongly with the mean speed V_arity. as : c = 0.5145+1.1376V_arith with correlation coefficient r = 0.998.

Keywords: Weibull’s parameters, Power law exponent, wind parameter, utiliziable wind energy, indoor ventilation

Journal of the Nigerian Association of Mathematical Physics, Volume 19 (November, 2011), pp 543 – 550