Abstract
Of the new and renewable energies currently being pursued domestically, wind energy, together with solar photovoltaic energy, is a new core growth driver industry of Korea. As of May 2012, 33 wind farms at a capacity of 347.8MW are in operation domestically. The purpose of this study was to compare and analyze how efficiently each operational wind farm is utilizing its power generation capacity and the weather resource of wind. For this purpose, the study proceeded in 3 phases. In phase 1, ANOVA analysis was performed for each wind farm, thereby categorizing farms according to capacity, region, generator manufacturer, and quantity of weather resources available and comparing and analyzing the differences among their operating efficiency. In phase 2, for comparative analysis of the operating efficiency of each farm, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to calculate the efficiency index of individual farms. In the final phase, phase 3, regression analysis was used to analyze the effects of weather resources and the operating efficiency of the wind farm on the power generation per unit equipment. Results shows that for wind power generation, only a few farms had relatively high levels of operating efficiency, with most having low efficiency. Regression analysis showed that for wind farms, a 1 hour increase in wind speeds of at least 3m/s resulted in an average increase of 0.0000045MWh in power generation per 1MW generator equipment capacity, and a unit increase in the efficiency scale was found to result in approximately 0.20MWh power generation improvement per unit equipment.
