Wind Power Generation
Armenia has a number of areas with promising wind resources. The most promising areas that have been identified and characterized to date are Zod Pass, Karakach Pass, Pushkin Pass and Sisian Pass. Together these sites are estimated to have 800 MW of developable resource potential, with estimated capacity factors ranging from 21% to 31%, depending on the site.
The first wind power atlas of Armenia was developed by ECOTECH Scientific Association in 1989-1990. Synoptic data was analyzed from 37 hydro-meteorological stations of the Republic of Armenia and the corrections of air density and openness of all considered stations were carried out. According to obtained results theoretical wind power potential of Armenia was assessed as 2426-4418 MW.
According to the Armenian Wind Atlas developed in 2002-03 by The United States National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in collaboration with SolarEn Co (Armenia) the most perspective areas for grid connected wind power development in Armenia from purely wind power resource point of view are corresponds to the wind Class from 4 to 7 (Good and Excellent classes). Table and figure bellow summarise the results of Wind Atlas for this territories of Armenia.
Armenia are limited and located mostly on remote mountainous passes typically with high elevation (2000 m and more) with limited and hard access. This will lead to higher than average on site transportation and installation costs of wind turbines. From considered 4 perspective wind class areas only class 4 (upper level of Good class) and class 5 (lower level of Excellent class) can be considered as realistic for construction of real wind power plants. The “turn-key” cost of installation for up to MW class wind turbines for these two “realistic” class sites in Armenia was assessed in 2006-07 by several local developers (Solaren LLC, Zod Wind LLC, AR Energy LLC, Gierret Co) and international vendors (Gamessa, Vestas) and was in the range of 1.3 – 1.6 mln €/MW.
