Abstract

This report examines the first year’s operational data from Kentucky’s first utility wind turbine, the 37 m hub-height 90-kilowatt NPS100C-27, operated by the PPL Corporation Research and Development at their Renewable Integration Research Facility in Mercer County, Kentucky. During that year, the turbine was available 95% of the time, spinning 85% of the time, and generating power 78% of the time, and had a net capacity factor of 11%. This report analyzes the turbine performance and uses the collected wind data to project the performance of an example turbine more typical of larger commercial turbines recently installed elsewhere in the United States. The data analyzed for the first year of data, Feb. 2024 through Feb. 2025, indicates that the average windspeed for the site is 26% less than the modeled estimates from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) WIND Toolkit for the same site with approximately similar height for historical weather data from 2009-2013. The data also indicate actual windspeed measurements are 40% less than the WTK-LED estimates for similar height for historical weather data for 2018-2020. A multi-year windspeed analysis at nearby sites indicates that the wind speeds during the period of data collection was not appreciably different than during the NREL modeled years. We hypothesize that there are localized terrain features at the site that affect the wind in ways that might not be considered in the NREL models. This paper presents three ways to evaluate this hypothesis of localized terrain impacts by using data from nearby Kentucky Mesonet weather stations. First, we consider directional analysis using wind rose plots supplemented by terrain map analysis. Second, we consider correlation analysis between the stations and the PPL NPS turbine, considering correlations by time of day by season. Finally, we perform Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify major dimensions of variance (positive or negative) in the data. Each of these analyses support a hypothesis of local terrain at the PPL site affecting the wind compared to nearby sites. If the difference in wind characteristics from the site vs. NREL estimates are due to such terrain features being not considered in the NREL models, then the estimates may similarly be off for other sites or regions in the state.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2025

Notes/Citation Information

Report on the First Year of Operation of Kentucky’s First Utility Wind Turbine © 2025 by L. E. Holloway, S.A. Hahn, and A. Patrick is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.13023/ECE.2025.01

Funding Information

This research was funded by the PPL Corporation Research & Development and the Kentucky Utilities Endowed Professorship at the University of Kentucky.

Related Content

All data files for the analysis and the R-code for the analysis are being provided in a zip file with this report.

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