UTILIZATION OF WIND POWER IN RWANDA : Design and Production Option

University essay from KTH/Kraft- och värmeteknologi

Author: Maniraguha Eric; [2013]

Keywords: It has been an honor to work on this research with my advisors Professor Etienne NTAGWIRUMUGARA and Mr. Nenad GLODIC.Their insights; guidance; encouragement and support throughout this research work enabled me to stay motivated and productive. I appreciate all their contribution of time; effort and ideas to this work. I would like to thank Professor Andrew Martin Director of Sustainable Energy Engineering SEE MSc Program; for giving us the opportunity to study at KTH School of Industrial Engineering and Management. This work would not have been possible without them. I am grateful to my sponsors; the government of Rwanda and KTH School of Industrial Engineering and Management. Without their financial support this work would be none existent. To the faculty; staff and fellow students; particularly students followed the Sustainable Energy Utilization as Specialization of the Sustainable Energy Technology at KTH School of Industrial Engineering and Management. My Special thanks are to MSc thesis administrator; Oxana SAMOTEEVA; Dr. Chamindie SENARATNE; Deputy Program Director for SEE Worldwide at Royal Institute of Technology; Dr. Venant KAYIBANDA Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at KIST and Facilitator of KTH based at KIST in Rwanda and EWSA’s authorities; for their suggestions; support and advices. I would like to conclude with lots of appreciation to two very special people; my wife Angélique UWAYISABA B.Sc IT and my son Liévin D’ARTAGNAN for their continuous prayers during the whole period of my study. Thank you.;

Abstract: This Master Thesis is the research done in the country of Rwanda. The project leads to study the climate of this country in order to establish whether this climate could be used to produce energy from air and to implement the first wind turbine for serving the nation.   After an introduction about the historical background of wind power, the thesis work deals with assessment of wind energy potential of Rwanda in focusing of the most suitable place for wind power plants. The best location with annual mean wind speed, the rate of use of turbine with hub height for an annual production per year, the mean wind speeds for 6 sites of Rwanda based on ECMWF for climatic data for one year at relief of altitude of 100m and coordinates are reported too.   The result of energy produced and calculations were done based on power hitting wind turbine generator in order to calculate Kinetic energy and power available at the best location to the measurement over the period of 12 months, that could be hoped for long term.   With help of logarithmic law, where wind speed usually increases with increasing in elevation and the desired wind speeds at all 6 sites were used. The annual energy production was taken into account at the best site with desired wind speed at the initial cost of turbine as well as the cost of energy (COE).However, with comparison of the tariff of EWSA, the price of Wind designed in this Research per kWh is cheaper and suitable for people of Rwanda.

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