A comparative study to analyze wind potential of different wind corridors

The rollout of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has benefited Pakistan in getting a faster pace in terms of economic and financial stability. Pakistan has a significant geographical location in the Asian continent. It possesses an enormous renewable energy sources (RES) potential, primarily wind, in its Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtun-Khuwa (KPK) provinces. This study concentrates on the availability of wind power potential at the selected twelve sites located in three different provinces of the country, using the Weibull probability distribution (WPD) technique. Five parametric estimation techniques were simulated on the data sets of the selected wind sites to find the optimal results. The obtained results showed that the annual wind energy density was found to be 3668.28 kWh/m2 at Lucky Energy, 3297.21 kWh/m2 at Sujawal, 3180.03 kWh/m2 at Tando Ghulam Ali, 2836.76 kWh/m2 at Sanghar, 2821.09 kWh/m2 at Baburband, 2684.32 kWh/m2 at Ketibandar, 2618.78 kWh/m2 at Umerkot, 1759.2 kWh/m2 Hawksby, 1253.76 kWh/m2 at Gwadar, 896.41 kWh/m2 at Quetta, 558.59 kWh/m2 at Haripur and 376.07 kWh/m2 at Peshawar respectively. From the results, it is found that sites present in Sindh province are suitable for commercial-scale wind farm development and the selected wind sites of Balochistan are appropriate for utility-scale wind power development. In contrast, the selected wind sites of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province are unsuitable for commercial scale due to low wind speeds around the year.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

The rollout of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has helped Pakistan achieve faster economic and financial stability. Pakistan, located in a significant geographical position in Asia, has immense renewable energy potential, primarily wind energy, in its Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtun-Khwa provinces. This study focuses on twelve selected sites in these provinces and uses the Weibull probability distribution technique to assess their wind power potential. The results show that Sindh is suitable for commercial-scale wind farm development, Balochistan is appropriate for utility-scale wind power development, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is unsuitable for commercial-scale due to low wind speeds throughout the year.