A Metropolitan Wind Resource Assessment for Bangkok, Thailand Part 2: GIS Analysis and Technical Wind Resource Potential

Abstract

This paper describes the second part of the work entitled “A Metropolitan Wind Resource Assessment for Bangkok, Thailand.” It estimates the technical potential for electricity generation from wind energy and suggests how it should be utilized, based on wind power density results from the first paper. Here, a number GIS (geographical information system) layers were prepared to exclude areas deemed not suitable for turbine installation, and they were used with the developed wind resource maps to estimate annual energy production (AEP) from winds. It was found that largest contributions to total AEP come from very small turbine installations in low density urban, medium-to-high density urban, and non-urban areas (1,453, 700, and 689 GWh, respectively). Potential turbine capacity factors are most promising for very small turbines installed on tall buildings (an estimated 25-35%). The total AEP given by wind energy over the province was found to be 3,719 GWh, equivalent to up to 10% of total consumption in the province. This amount of energy is considered substantial from an economic viewpoint since Bangkok alone already shares up to approximately a quarter of national electricity consumption.