Wind resource potential in Los Taques-Venezuela

The Venezuelan government has established more aggressive policies and incentives for renewable energy resources in recent time, especially in terms of wind power. Although several academic efforts to make publically available wind energy resource data in Venezuela, there is a lack of information in terms of local wind resource putting in risk development in areas where potential is good enough for commercial exploitation. The objective of this paper is to presents a very comprehensive wind resource assessment at Los Taques, Venezuela based on on-site observation anemometry. This is unique paper because it is the first ever wind energy assessment in Los Taques using hourly data recorded during three years in an on-site ground weather station contrary to studies based on daily values based on radar or satellite data. The applied methodology has been developed based on the characteristic of the data obtained from the on-site anemometry. Results of wind energy assessment and evaluations on a 100 MW wind farm shows the wind energy resource available in Los Taques is enough for commercial use and the results.