Pre- feasibility Study of Hypothetical Wind Energy Project Using Simulated and Measured Data

In this study, the preliminary economic feasibility study of the project of wind power at the site of AlShehabi (Wasit-Iraq) was conducted using measured wind data at altitudes of 10 m, 30 m, 50 m and 52 m per 10 minutes. For the purpose of comparison, data from NASA space was used at the same location at 50 m height. The lowest unit cost of electricity from wind energy was found (0.0618 $/Kwh and 0.0786 $/Kwh) by using standard methodology Levelized cost of Energy (LCOE) equation and Net Present Value (NPV) procedure respectively. Furthermore, RETScreen software was used to perform the economic prefeasibility study of a proposed wind farm. The study concludes this site is economically feasible if a wind farm 5.0MW of ten wind turbines (EWT DW54) were erected with NPV of $11,309,956, After-tax IRR 24.7% and simple payback period 6.1 years at capacity factor of 38.34%. Finally, wind farm development will result in a reduction in greenhouse gases of 31876 tCO2 per each year. The sensitivity and risk analysis were performed and guarantee the safety of specified financial input parameters values.