"Senok expects to complete the project and start transmitting electricity to the national grid within the next few weeks."
The plant is located on a five kilometre long strip of land that is a kilometre wide in the Mampuri areas of Kalpitya in the Puttalam district.
The company has installed eight wind turbine generators bought from India's Suzlon Energy Ltd.
Senok Power says the site could accommodate another two rows of wind turbines to with a total capacity of 30 MegaWatts.
Officials say the firm will get 18.66 rupees plus 2.14 rupees from the first to the eight year of a standardized power purchase agreement (SPPA) under which it will sell power to the state-run Ceylon Electricity Board.
This will generate higher cashflow for the firm to pay off loans in the first few years.
From year 8 to 15 it will get 7.05 rupees and from year 16 the firm will get one rupee and 30 cents officials said. The agreement runs for 20 years.
Officials say the plant is estimated to generate 28 million kiloWatt hours of energy a year. This gives the wind farm a plant factor of slightly over 31 percent.
State-run CEB has had a 3 MegaWatt wind farm in the Southern Hambantota district which had a plant factor of less than 15 percent.
Senok says the site gets wind from an Asian monsoon system that blows in a north easterly direction from December to February and much stronger winds in a south westerly direction from May to September.
The mean annual wind speed is about 7.0 to 7.5 metres per second at 50 metres above ground level. The power plants are located 80 metres above ground.
The wind farm uses eight model S64 -1250 Suzlon constant speed wind turbine generators which can produce 1,250 kiloWatts of power driven by a three-bladed epoxy bonded fibreglass rotor with a diameter of 64 metres.
Has any studies conducted to determine the wind density or the frequency of average wind speed, etc. So I hope the project has conducted proper evaluation of the wind resource potential in the region to arrive at the 31% load factor. My experience shows this is unrealistic.
My best guess for the this wind farm. This particular wind farm has 8 wind turbines of capacity 1.25 MW or has the capacity to produce 10 MW*24*365= 87600 MWh of electricity production, provided the optimum wind speed blows 24 hrs 365 days a year. However, wind is intermittent and generally the optimum wind speed blows only 25% of the year (all wind turbines used in this project are constant speed, therefore their operation is restricted to a narrow wind speed range).
The load factor of most wind farm is 20% and provided this wind farm has located the wind mills at correct positions, the annual electricity production is only 20% of 87600 MWh = 17520 MWh.
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