Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
Open Access

Abstract

Potential of Wind Energy Development for Water Pumping in Ngaoundere

Ruben M. Mouangue, Myrin Y. Kazet, Daniel Lissouck, Alexis Kuitche and J.M. Ndjaka

The modelling of wind energy conversion systems is of great importance if one intends to develop water pumping applications for a sustainable development. This paper presents a technical assessment based on the measured wind data in which we investigate the possibility of coupling piston pump, roto-dynamic pump and electric pump with wind rotors for water pumping applications. Weibull distribution is used to model the monthly mean wind speed for a location in the town of Ngaoundere. It is found that there is a good agreement between the predicted values of the mean wind speed and those obtained from data suggesting that the Weibull distribution can be used to provide accurate estimation of the mean wind speed. The mean electric power and energy are computed based on the power curves of Vestas V25 and V100. Taking into account the wind regime characteristics of our site, we provide the amount of water which can be expected from each type of wind pumps. The monthly amount of water has minimum and maximum average values of 422 m3 and 674 m3 for the piston pump, 1275 m3 and 1982 m3 for the roto-dynamic pump and 31334 m3 and 100042 m3 for the electric pump. From the results, it is clear that electric pump offer better performances than piston and rotodynamic pumps.