Electricity generation from the first wind farm situated at Ras Ghareb, Egypt

Egypt is one of the Red Sea and Mediterranean countries having windy enough areas, in particular along the coasts. The coastal location Ras Ghareb on the Red Sea has been investigated in order to know the wind power density available for electricity generation. To account for the wind potential variations with height, a new simple estimating procedure was introduced. This study has explicitly demonstrated the presence of high wind power density nearly 900kW/m² per year at 100m of altitude for this region. Indeed, the seasonal wind powers available are comparable to and sometimes higher than the power density in many European cities for wind electricity applications like Vindeby (Denmark) and also America. New technical analysis for wind turbine characteristics have been made using three types of commercial wind turbines possessing the same rotor diameter and rated power to choice the best wind machine suitable for Ras Ghareb station. As per the decreasing the cut-in wind speed for the wind turbine used, the availability factor increases for a given generator. That it could produce more energy output throughout the year for the location. The aim of this research, was to predict the electrical energy production with the cost analysis of a wind farm 150MW total power installed at Ras Ghareb area using 100 wind turbines model (Repower MD 77) with 1.5MW rated power. Additionally, this paper developed the methodology for estimating the price of each kWh electricity from the wind farms. Results show that this wind park will produce maximum energy of 716GWh/year. The expected specific cost equal to 1.5€cent/kWh is still less than and very competitive price with that produced from the wind farms in Great Britain and Germany and at the international markets of wind power. The important result derived from this study encourages several wind parks with hundreds of megawatts can be constructed at Ras Ghareb region.