Energy fuel saving benefit of a wind turbine

The paper presents a study carried out to investigate the economics of wind turbine as an energy fuel saver. The load and the wind data is taken from a remote agricultural research station in Oman. The station is provided electricity with diesel-engine generating units. The annual peak load and minimum load recorded at the site is 130 kW and 28 kW respectively. The annual average wind speed at the site is 5.7 m/s. A 50 kW wind turbine is selected to demonstrate the economic feasibility of the turbine as a fuel saver. The results show that wind energy utilization is an attractive option with total specific cost of the selected wind turbine at 9.3 c/kWh at 10% discount rate comparing to diesel generation operating cost of 10.3 c/kWh, considering the capital cost of diesel units as sunk. The simple payback period of the turbine is 8.5 years.