Technical and Financial Assessment of a 50 Mw Wind Power Plant in Ghana
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Date
October 2010
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Abstract
Wind is one of the promising renewable energy sources in Ghana. Despite the wind power potential, Ghana is yet to develop a wind power plant to supplement her energy needs. This thesis looks at the technical and financial assessment of a grid connected 50 MW wind power plant in Ghana.
Wind speed data from the Ghana Energy Commission was analyzed with WAsP and Mankoadze and Anloga were chosen based on annual average wind speeds of 6.1 m/s and 5.4 m/s respectively. Average wind shear exponents determined for Mankoadze and Anloga were 0.214 and 0.236 respectively and these were used for extrapolation to 80 m a.g.l. Nordex N80/2500 wind turbine was used for technical and financial analyses. It was estimated that the annual energy production at Mankoadze and Anloga (80m a.g.l.) were 121.7 GWh and 98.0 GWh respectively and at capacity factors 27.8% and 22.4% respectively. The annual GHG savings at Mankoadze was 108,065 t CO2 whiles that at Anloga was 87,049 t CO2. The total initial cost of the 50 MW wind power project with a typical wind turbine cost of $1,500/kW was estimated to be over 100 million dollars. It was also estimated that for the wind power project to be financially viable (i.e. NPV greater than zero at a discount factor of 10%), the tariffs at Mankoadze and Anloga should be a minimum of $ 0.15/kWh and $ 0.19/kWh, respectively.
Description
A Thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering.