| Summary: | Recent decades show a massive demand increment toward clean sources of energy as
the world is experiencing industrial and technological revolutions. Among the various
clean energy resources, wind and solar can be utilized effectively. This study aims to study
wind and solar energy potentials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia while identifying seasonal
variations of wind and solar energies in the city. The essentiality of the study relies on the
added benefits to the country where this research can help in finding other alternatives
of energy other than fossil fuel. The Weibull distribution function and the Angstrom
techniques were respectively used for the wind and solar resources assessments. The
meteorological data involved are for ten years (2010-2019) including wind speed and
direction, direct and diffused solar radiations. The results show that the prevailing wind
direction at 10 m and 80 m altitudes were north and north-northwest, respectively.
Meanwhile, the mean wind speed at 80 m altitude is found to be 4.36 m/s and 3.72 m/s
at 10 m altitudes. The highest wind power and wind energy densities were at 80 m
altitude with the value of 192.19 W/m2 and 247.29 kWh/m2
, respectively. In terms of
solar resources, the site has an average potentiality of global solar radiation of 23.13
MJm2
. The highest average possible sunshine duration occurred mostly in February, June,
and November with respective values between 12.00 and 12.034 hours for most of the
years. Lastly, the highest Angstrom’s ratio occurred during June 2016 scoring 0.7942
while the lowest on the other hand was in December 2015, scoring 0.4253.
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