An Assessment of Wind Power Density at Selected Heights in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria

The focus of this study is to assess the power density in the wind at some selected turbine hub heights to describe the potential for wind power generation in Maiduguri. The power law equation was used to extrapolate the wind speeds at the chosen turbine hub heights of 50 m, 70 m, 90 m and 120 m. The extrapolated wind speeds were employed to estimate the expected monthly wind power densities based on the Weibull distribution. The results show that (i) over 75 % of the wind speeds extrapolated in all the months at the selected heights satisfy the cut-in wind speed requirement of 3.5 m/s for most wind power turbines, (ii) wind power density increases with the cube of the scale parameter value of the Weibull distribution, (iii) wind power densities are high between March and July in the range of 427.02 735.08 W/m2, with the peak occurring in June and (iv) the highest power density occurs in June while the lowest power density occurs in October