| Abstract: | The wind power industry is nowadays a mature energy production sector disposing to market commercial wind converters from 50 W up to 5 MW. In the present work the possibility of using stand‐alone electricity production systems based on a small wind turbine in order to meet the electricity requirements of remote consumers is analysed for selected Aegean Sea regions possessing representative wind potential types. The proposed configuration results from an extensive long‐term meteorological data analysis on a no‐load rejection condition basis during the entire time period examined. Accordingly, an integrated energy balance analysis is carried out for the whole time period investigated, including also the system battery depth‐of‐discharge distribution versus time. Finally, the predicted optimum system configuration is compared to other existing technoeconomic alternatives on a simplified total production cost basis. The results support the viability of similar solutions, especially for areas of high or medium wind potential. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
