Empirical Study Of Wind Energy Potential In Calabar Cross River State Nigeria

Abstract This paper focuses on wind energy potentials in Calabar a coastal city. The wind speed data were collected from Margaret Ekpo International Airport Calabar NIMET. The Objective of this study is to examine whether the wind energy in Calabar can generate sufficient energy to supplement electricity generation for the Calabar region. The primary data obtained is monthly mean in the form of wind speed for a period of 5year 2008 - 2012. These was used to estimate the available wind energy potential in calabar. The results show that the annual wind is 1.3 ms indicating Calabar as a low wind speed region. The wind power density value of 3.11Wm2 indicates that Calabar wind can only be used for small stand-alone wind power systems such as battery charging and for powering street light and water pumps fig 1 2 3 26 4. The weibull probability distribution scale parameters k are higher in values and variability than the shape parameter c for the monthly distribution. Calabar wind cannot be used to generate electricity because the wind speed data at 10m height doesnt exceed 2.5ms due to the standard cut in speed.