Wind Resource Potential in the Caribbean Archipelago

Climate change threatens the sustainable development and survival of the small Caribbean island nations. The continual rise in the demand and cost of the earth＇s finite hydrocarbon energy reservoir drives these countries to examine the integration of renewable energy to reduce green house gas emissions whilst meeting their electrical energy demands. One possible renewable energy source is wind. Trinidad and Tobago, through its renewable energy policy, is seeking to reliably and economically integrate wind power with its conventional power generation sources. This paper assesses the adequacy of wind power generation at potential sites through the use of auto-regressive modeling and the use of Monte Carlo Simulation to evaluate the well-being indices for the combination of wind and conventional power generation. Two sites in the twin island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago were identified as case studies for the proposed methodology. Analysis of the results indicated that the methodology should be applied to sites with conditions encouraging economic feasibility of wind power generation.