ANALYSIS OF WIND AND SOLAR RESOURCES FOR NEW ENGLAND

We used hourly wind and solar data to calculate the energy output of residential-scale systems throughout New England in order to determine the potential for and cost-effectiveness of renewable energy systems throughout the region. We used the solar data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) typical meteorological year data set 3(TMY3). TMY3 contains 52 New England sites with data at hourly intervals for an entire year. To increase the amount of sites used in this analysis we used data from the NREL Eastern Wind Integration Dataset. There are 113 New England sites in the Eastern Wind Dataset.

The TMY3 wind speed and the global horizontal insolation for all 52 New England sites were used as input for wind turbine and photovoltaic power system models based on the Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER) software. The turbine model in HOMER was the Entegrity Wind Turbine 50 kW system and the PV system was a 50 kW AC system with efficiency of 80%. We used HOMER to calculate the capacity factor, which is the ratio of annual energy output to the maximum output possible for a system of that capacity.

Our results indicate that the more densely populated areas of New England as represented by the TMY3 sites are not well suited for wind power systems, but some of these urban sites have much higher energy production potential. These results also indicate that the Eastern Wind Dataset sites selected by the NREL study have much greater wind potential than more typical New England locations.

The 52 TMY3 sites used in this study do not constitute a high-resolution grid nor do they give equal weight to all regional climates. The TMY3 sites give greater weight to population centers at the expense of more remote areas. For example, no data is included for the windier western side of Maine. In contrast to this data set, the 113 Eastern Wind Data set includes data for the areas of New England with the highest wind power potential.

The main conclusions that we have drawn from this study seem to be robust: residential solar energy systems have good potential throughout New England, but land-based wind power systems have low potential in most New England urban areas and have their greatest potential in less populated mountainous areas on the western side of the region.