Background

The selection of suitable energy resources is highly dependent on the potential sites
topography (Goh, Lee, Chua, Goh, & Teo, 2016). The power generation plant is depending on
the sites available resources. For instance, places with higher wind speed is very suitable for
wind power generation and area with higher capacity of water is suitable for hydropower
generation. Figure 1 shows the worldwide wind energy distribution.

Figure 1: Worldwide wind energy distribution.

In Malaysia, the average annual wind speed is less than 2 m/s which is state as low wind
speed. Besides that, the wind blows in Malaysia is not uniform. It is changing according to the
region and month. Malaysia has two main weather seasons called southeast monsoon which
occurs from May to June and northeast monsoon occurs from November to June. According
to the data from Malaysian Department of Meteorology, the highest wind speed during
southeast monsoon is 7 m/s meanwhile during northeast monsoon, the highest wind speed is
15 m/s. This phenomenon particularly happens in the east cost of Peninsular Malaysia (Sung,
2013). Therefore, even though Malaysia has a low average annual wind speed, at some
particular region it has strong winds during certain periods of time.
 Figure 2(a)

Figure 2(b)

Figure 2 (a) and 2(b): Mean monthly wind speed graph for several towns in
Malaysia (Data from year 1989 until 2008).
References
Goh, H. H., Lee, S. W., Chua, Q. S., Goh, K., & Teo, K. T. (2016). Wind energy assessment considering
wind speed correlation. Renewable and Suistainable Energy Reviews, 1389-1400.

Sung, C. T. (2013, April 10). Extraordinary Minds discuss Ideas. Retrieved from Christopher Teh:
www.christopherteh.com/blog/2010/11/wind-energy/