Assessment of Wind Energy Production Software

Abstract

An examination of two computer programs used for estimating wind energy, RETScreen and System Advisor Model (SAM), are examined and compared to measured data from a wind farm. Wind speed and electrical production estimated by these programs are examined and compared to the measured data. Both programs assume no losses and predict data for an ideal wind farm. Measured data on the other hand includes losses within the farm (e.g. array loss, airfoil loss and availability loss). According to results, RETScreen underestimates the electrical production by 35% and SAM overestimates it by 26%.