Overview
The goal of the wind feasibility study is to assess the wind power resource of the Cordova area. There are wind maps for the Cordova region, however these maps use long term data from the nearest weather station (seen below). While these maps serve as a good starting point they do accurately portray the wind resource for the area. For the wind map of the Cordova area the weather data was taken from the airport. While this data may allow for fairly accurate wind speed projections for the copper river valley, the wind speeds located on the other side of the Heney range could be quite different.
AEA wind speed map
In order to be able to construct wind turbines more accurate wind data and analysis is needed. For this study wind speed, direction, and temperature will be collected at a total of 14 sites. Two of the sites will be 30m towers with sensors at 30m and 10m. These 30m towers will stay in one place for a minimum of 12 months.
30m tower at Point Whitshed
The other 12 towers will be mobile 10m towers that will be erected and kept at a particular site for 4 months and then moved. It would be ideal to leave each 10m tower at a single location for a minimum of a year as well. However due to the cost of tower components and lack of time, 4 month time intervals will work. The four month data from the mobile 10m towers will be correlated to the closest 30m tower and then the missing data will be modeled or “synthesized”. Having these mobile towers will also allow us to quickly determine whether an area will be suitable for possible turbine placement.
Portable 10m tower