• Wind and Structures
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• 제28권6호
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• pp.369-380
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• 2019

Statistical distributions are very useful in describing wind speed characteristics and in predicting wind power potential of a specified region. Although the Weibull distribution is the most popular one in wind energy literature, it does not seem to be able to perfectly fit all the investigated wind speed data in nature. Thus, many studies are still being conducted to find flexible distribution for modelling wind speed data. In this study, we propose a new Odd-Burr Rayleigh distribution for wind speed characterization. The Odd-Burr Rayleigh distribution with two shape parameters is flexible enough to model different shapes of wind speed data and thus it can be an alternative wind speed distribution for the assessment of wind energy potential. Therefore, suitability of the Odd-Burr Rayleigh distribution is investigated on real wind speed data taken from different regions in the South Africa. Numerical results of the conducted analysis confirm that the new Odd-Burr Rayleigh distribution is suitable for modelling most of the considered real wind speed cases and it also can be used for predicting wind power.