Potential of Electricity Generation on the Western Coast of Mediterranean Sea in Egypt

A technical and economic assessment has been made of the electricity generation by wind turbines located at three promising potential wind sites: Sidi Barrani, Mersa Matruh and El Dabaa in the extreme northwest of Egypt along the Mediterranean Sea. These contiguous stations along the coast have an annual mean wind speed greater than 5.0 m/s at a height of 10 m. Weibull's parameters and the power law coefficient for all seasons have been estimated and used to describe the distribution and behavior of seasonal winds at these stations. The annual values of wind potential at the heights of 70-100 m above the ground level were obtained by extrapolation of the 10 m data from the results of our previous work using the power law. The three stations have a high wind power density, ranging from 340-425 to 450-555 W/m² at the heights of 70-100 m, respectively. In this paper, an analysis of the cost per kWh of electricity generated by two different systems has been made: one using a relatively large single 2 MW wind turbine and the other - 25 small wind turbines (80 kW, total 2 MW) arranged in a wind farm. The yearly energy output of each system at each site was determined, and the electricity generation costs in each case were also calculated and compared with those at using diesel oil, natural gas and photovoltaic systems furnished by the Egyptian Electricity Authority. The single 2 MW wind turbine was found to be more efficient than the wind farm. For all the three considered stations the electricity production cost was found to be less than 2 ϵ cent/kWh, which is about half the specific cost of the wind farm.