Authors : J. Aidan and J.C. Ododo
Abstract: The wind speed data of 8 cities in Northern Nigeria have been fitted to four distribution functions (normal, Weibull, Rayleigh and gamma). The goodness-of-fit at the 5% significance level has been determined by using chi-square, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Anderson-Darling tests. For four of the cities (Bida, Minna, Yelwa and Yola) which have the lowest altitudes (<260 m) the gamma distribution is found to give the best fit while for the other cities (Gusau, Kaduna, Maiduguri and Zaria) either the Weibull or normal distribution gives the best fit. By considering the predicted wind speed variations at various heights above the ground, it is seen that the potential for utility-scale wind power generation at a height of about 80 m is very satisfactory especially for Gusau, Kaduna, Maiduguri and Zaria.
J. Aidan and J.C. Ododo, 2010. Wind Speed Distributions and Power Densities of Some Cities in Northern Nigeria. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 5: 420-426.