Methods for Estimating Wind Speed Frequency Distributions

TLDR

The Weibull function is used to represent wind speed frequency distributions. The study presents methods to estimate the Weibull scale and shape parameters from simple wind statistics. The methods are compared to a square‑root‑normal distribution approach that uses mean wind speed and fastest‑mile data. The Weibull distribution yields lower root‑mean‑square errors than the square‑root‑normal method and can be projected to other heights using its parameters.

Abstract

The Weibull function is discussed for representation of the wind speed frequency distribution. Methods are presented for estimating the two Weibull parameters (scale factor c and shape factor k) from simple wind statistics. Comparison is made with a recently proposed method based on the “square-root-normal” distribution with mean wind speed and fastest mile data as input statistics. The Weibull distribution is shown to give smaller root-mean-square errors than the square-root-normal distribution when fitting actual distributions of observed wind speed. Another advantage of the Weibull distribution is the available methodology for projecting to another height the observed Weibull distribution parameters at anemometer height.