Use of Rayleigh Distribution Method For Assessment of Wind Energy Output in Cleveland–Ohio

The control of carbon emission in the atmosphere is possible only by mitigating the energy sources from fossil fuels to renewable energy resources such as the solar, wind, and tidal energies. these are abundantly available in the nature but the methods to capture and utilize these enormous potential resources are still under investigation due to the limited state of art of infrastructure and low-energy conversion efficiencies. in this work we focused our attention on the potential of the wind energy available around the lake erie region using the wind speed data for cleveland, ohio, usa. the major challenge in developing a model that generates a uniform output is to have many uncertainties that require deeper studies. in this work, we discussed the available wind energy throughout the year, and the pattern for the wind power output according to a monthly basis was discussed for the last ten years. a statistical method was utilized using the rayleigh probability distribution function in order to estimate the mean wind speed and calculate the annual energy output from a windmill at the understudied location. an annual energy output of 1286.41 kwh/m² was estimated by the rayleigh pdf method, whereas the actual energy output was 920.24 kwh/m² for the observed historical data in the period of 2009-2018. due to the high uncertainties in the nature of wind flow and the limited research works in the field of renewable energy, the rayleigh pdf approach overestimated the actual wind power output by 40% in this work.