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Results from the technical assessment of the Ravenna coast in Italy
WICO is an experimental project which is providing interesting information about the potential applications of mini wind turbines along coastal areas.
As part of the analysis phase of the project, the Province of Ravenna in Italy installed 3 anemometers in different environmental conditions to collect wind data.
Much of the Ravenna Province coastline is characterised by a beautiful pinewood which is located between the beach and residential buildings and hotels which blocks the westerly winds. For this reason, two anemometers were placed on the roofs of seaside resorts in Ravenna, one with the pinewood behind and one without any kind of barrier, both at a height of 6 meters. The third anemometer was placed on the roof of a hotel in Cervia at a height of 30 meters without any barriers.
The goal was to assess the wind speed in different conditions, both with the pinewood barrier and where no natural or artificial barriers exist.
Data collected from November 2009 to April 2010 on the roof of the seaside resorts in front of the pinewood show very low wind speeds; with a mean speed of just 2.2 m/s. This is due to the pinewood, whose average height is higher than the anemometer, stopping the strong prevailing wind from the West.
The data from the seaside resort and the hotel without the obstacles showed promising wind data that seems to be sufficient to install a small wind turbine in order to produce approximately the same energy that could be produced through the installation of PV panels.
Following these first results, some additional technical evaluation and testing of different wind turbine designs was undertaken to assess their performance in the different environmental conditions.
Due to the high degree of turbulence of the wind, vertical axis wind turbines seem to be the most promising design for the area.
So in addition to assessing how suitable the Ravenna Province coastline is for the deployment of small wind systems we have also researched how many of the hotels and seaside resorts are located in "open areas" without obstacles to the wind flows from both the inland and coastal sides.
The result is that 166 seaside resorts out of a total of 397 and 61 hotels out of 778 do not have any kind of barriers around and would be suitable for small wind systems.
Of course this first analysis needs to be deepened and matched with detailed wind data, but as a first assessment, interesting results were obtained as to the number of potential locations offering the best conditions without any wind barriers.
Thanks to WICO, an important "pioneering" analysis work is under development which aims to provide reliable information for the development of small wind systems and a more green economy.
By the end of the project further data and information on the assessment results will be available on the project web pages of the Province of Ravenna
http://www.provincia.ra.it/Argomenti/Ambiente/Energia-ed-elettromagnetismo/WICO-Wind-of-the-Coast
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