Performance assessment of a balloon assisted micro airborne wind turbine system

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naveen Prakash Noronha ◽  
Krishna Munishamaih

Abstract This study intends to examine the performance of a balloon-assisted micro airborne wind turbine in a low wind speed location. The influence of the balloon separation gap on the airborne wind energy system (AWES) performance is also explored. A micro-AWES with a diameter of 3 m and a power output of 1 kW was fabricated and tested at 50, 100, 150, 200, and 250 m. Further, the optimum separation spacing of 13 m was maintained between the balloon and the ducted turbine to reduce balloon turbulence on the turbine. The airborne wind turbine achieved a maximum power output of 250 W at 250 m height while the average wind speed remained 6 m/s. The maximum power coefficient obtained was 0.25 while annual energy production (AEP) remained 1200 kWh. The low power coefficient is credited to the turbulence and drifting in the airborne system and the drag caused by the airborne structure. While a cost-effective commercial model of micro AWES is still being developed, the present work attempts to harvest wind energy at high elevations in low wind speed areas.

2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahim Hassanzadeh ◽  
Milad Mohammadnejad ◽  
Sajad Mostafavi

Abstract Savonius turbines are one of the old and cost-effective turbines which extract the wind energy by the drag force. Nowadays, they use in urban areas to generate electricity due to their simple structure, ease of maintenance, and acceptable power output under a low wind speed. However, their efficiency is low and the improvement of their performance is necessary to increase the total power output. This paper compares four various blade profiles in a two-blade conventional Savonius wind turbine. The ratios of blade diameter to the blade depth of s/d = 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 1 are tested under different free-wind speeds of 3, 5, and 7 m/s and tip speed ratios (TSRs) in the range from 0.2 to 1.2. It is found that the profile of blades in a Savonius rotor plays a considerable role in power characteristics. Also, regardless of blades profile and free-wind speed, the maximum power coefficient develops in TSR = 0.8. In addition, increasing the free-wind speed enhances the rotor performance of all cases under consideration. Finally, it is revealed that the rotor with s/d = 0.5 provides maximum power coefficients in all free-wind speeds and TSR values among the rotors under consideration, whereas the rotor with s/d = 1 is the worth cases.


Processes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yujia Zhang ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Yongwen Liu

In order to precisely control the wind power generation systems under nonlinear variable wind velocity, this paper proposes a novel maximum power tracking (MPPT) strategy for wind turbine systems based on a hybrid wind velocity forecasting algorithm. The proposed algorithm adapts the bat algorithm and improved extreme learning machine (BA-ELM) for forecasting wind speed to alleviate the slow response of anemometers and sensors, considering that the change of wind speed requires a very short response time. In the controlling strategy, to optimize the output power, a state feedback control technique is proposed to achieve the rotor flux and rotor speed tracking purpose based on MPPT algorithm. This method could decouple the current and voltage of induction generator to track the reference of stator current and flux linkage. By adjusting the wind turbine mechanical speed, the wind energy system could operate at the optimal rotational speed and achieve the maximal power. Simulation results verified the effectiveness of the proposed technique.


Author(s):  
S. G. Ignatiev ◽  
S. V. Kiseleva

Optimization of the autonomous wind-diesel plants composition and of their power for guaranteed energy supply, despite the long history of research, the diversity of approaches and methods, is an urgent problem. In this paper, a detailed analysis of the wind energy characteristics is proposed to shape an autonomous power system for a guaranteed power supply with predominance wind energy. The analysis was carried out on the basis of wind speed measurements in the south of the European part of Russia during 8 months at different heights with a discreteness of 10 minutes. As a result, we have obtained a sequence of average daily wind speeds and the sequences constructed by arbitrary variations in the distribution of average daily wind speeds in this interval. These sequences have been used to calculate energy balances in systems (wind turbines + diesel generator + consumer with constant and limited daily energy demand) and (wind turbines + diesel generator + consumer with constant and limited daily energy demand + energy storage). In order to maximize the use of wind energy, the wind turbine integrally for the period in question is assumed to produce the required amount of energy. For the generality of consideration, we have introduced the relative values of the required energy, relative energy produced by the wind turbine and the diesel generator and relative storage capacity by normalizing them to the swept area of the wind wheel. The paper shows the effect of the average wind speed over the period on the energy characteristics of the system (wind turbine + diesel generator + consumer). It was found that the wind turbine energy produced, wind turbine energy used by the consumer, fuel consumption, and fuel economy depend (close to cubic dependence) upon the specified average wind speed. It was found that, for the same system with a limited amount of required energy and high average wind speed over the period, the wind turbines with lower generator power and smaller wind wheel radius use wind energy more efficiently than the wind turbines with higher generator power and larger wind wheel radius at less average wind speed. For the system (wind turbine + diesel generator + energy storage + consumer) with increasing average speed for a given amount of energy required, which in general is covered by the energy production of wind turbines for the period, the maximum size capacity of the storage device decreases. With decreasing the energy storage capacity, the influence of the random nature of the change in wind speed decreases, and at some values of the relative capacity, it can be neglected.


Author(s):  
Yusuf Alper Kaplan

In this study, the compatibility of the real wind energy potential to the estimated wind energy potential by Weibull Distribution Function (WDF) of a region with low average wind speed potential was examined. The main purpose of this study is to examine the performance of six different methods used to find the coefficients of the WDF and to determine the best performing method for selected region. In this study seven-year hourly wind speed data obtained from the general directorate of meteorology of this region was used. The root mean square error (RMSE) statistical indicator was used to compare the efficiency of all used methods. Another main purpose of this study is to observe the how the performance of the used methods changes over the years. The obtained results showed that the performances of the used methods showed slight changes over the years, but when evaluated in general, it was observed that all method showed acceptable performance. Based on the obtained results, when the seven-year data is evaluated in this selected region, it can be said that the MM method shows the best performance.


2012 ◽  
Vol 215-216 ◽  
pp. 1323-1326
Author(s):  
Ming Wei Xu ◽  
Jian Jun Qu ◽  
Han Zhang

A small vertical axis wind turbine with wind speed self-adapting was designed. The diameter and height of the turbine were both 0.7m. It featured that the blades were composed of movable and fixed blades, and the opening and closing of the movable blades realized the wind speed self-adapting. Aerodynamic performance of this new kind turbine was tested in a simple wind tunnel. Then the self-starting and power coefficient of the turbine were studied. The turbine with load could reliably self-start and operate stably even when the wind velocity was only 3.6 m/s. When the wind velocity was 8 m/s and the load torque was 0.1Nm, the movable blades no longer opened and the wind turbine realized the conversion from drag mode to lift mode. With the increase of wind speed, the maximum power coefficient of the turbine also improves gradually. Under 8 m/s wind speed, the maximum power coefficient of the turbine reaches to 12.26%. The experimental results showed that the new turbine not only improved the self-starting ability of the lift-style turbine, but also had a higher power coefficient in low tip speed ratio.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Zilberman ◽  
Abdelaziz Abu Sbaih ◽  
Ibrahim Hadad

Abstract Wind energy has become an important resource for the growing demand for clean energy. In 2020 wind energy provided more than 6% of the global electricity demand. It is expected to reach 7% at the end of 2021. The installation growth rate of small wind turbines, though, is relatively slow. The reasons we are interested in the small vertical axis wind turbines are their low noise, environmentally friendly, low installation cost, and capable of being rooftop-mounted. The main goal of the present study is an optimization process towards achieving the optimal cost-effective vertical wind turbine. Thirty wind turbine models were tested under the same conditions in an Azrieli 30 × 30 × 90 cm low-speed wind tunnel at 107,000 Reynolds number. The different types of models were obtained by parametric variations of five basic models, maintaining the same aspect ratio but varying the number of bucket phases, the orientation angles, and the gaps between the vanes. The best performing turbine model was made of one phase with two vanes of non-symmetric bipolynomial profiles that exhibited 0.2 power coefficient, relative to 0.16 and 0.13 that were obtained for symmetrical polynomial and the original Savonius type turbines, respectively. Free rotation, static forces and moments, and dynamic moments and power were measured for the sake of comparison and explanation for the variations in performances of different types of turbines. CFD calculations were used to understand the forces and moment behaviors of the optimized turbine.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 5809
Author(s):  
Tania García-Sánchez ◽  
Arbinda Kumar Mishra ◽  
Elías Hurtado-Pérez ◽  
Rubén Puché-Panadero ◽  
Ana Fernández-Guillamón

Currently, wind power is the fastest-growing means of electricity generation in the world. To obtain the maximum efficiency from the wind energy conversion system, it is important that the control strategy design is carried out in the best possible way. In fact, besides regulating the frequency and output voltage of the electrical signal, these strategies should also extract energy from wind power at the maximum level of efficiency. With advances in micro-controllers and electronic components, the design and implementation of efficient controllers are steadily improving. This paper presents a maximum power point tracking controller scheme for a small wind energy conversion system with a variable speed permanent magnet synchronous generator. With the controller, the system extracts optimum possible power from the wind speed reaching the wind turbine and feeds it to the grid at constant voltage and frequency based on the AC–DC–AC conversion system. A MATLAB/SimPowerSystems environment was used to carry out the simulations of the system. Simulation results were analyzed under variable wind speed and load conditions, exhibiting the performance of the proposed controller. It was observed that the controllers can extract maximum power and regulate the voltage and frequency under such variable conditions. Extensive results are included in the paper.


Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 1463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kehinde A. Adeyeye ◽  
Nelson Ijumba ◽  
Jonathan S. Colton

The global population is moving away from fossil fuel technologies due to their many disadvantages, such as air pollution, greenhouse gases emission, global warming, acid rain, health problems, and high costs. These disadvantages make fossil fuels unsustainable. As a result, renewable energy is becoming more attractive due to its steadily decreasing costs. Harnessing renewable energy promises to meet the present energy demands of the African continent. The enormous renewable energy potential available across the African continent remains largely untapped, especially for wind energy. However, marginal and fair wind speeds and power densities characterize African wind energy resulting in low and unsustainable power in many areas. This research develops a techno-economic model for wind energy cost analysis for a novel, Ferris wheel-based wind turbine. The model is used to techno-economically analyze the siting of wind turbine sites in low wind speed areas on the African continent. The wind turbine’s technical performance is characterized by calculating the annual energy production and the capacity factor using the wind Weibull probability distribution of the cities and theoretical power curve of the wind turbine. Its economic performance is evaluated using annualized financial return on investment, simple payback period, and levelized cost of electricity. The techno-economic model is validated for 21 African cities and shows that the Ferris wheel-based design is very competitive with four current, commercial wind turbines, as well as with other sources of energy. Hence, the new wind turbine may help provide the economical, clean, renewable energy that Africa needs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Wahyu Santoso ◽  
Herman Saputro ◽  
Husin Bugis

<p><em>Energy from fossil fuels consisting of petroleum, coal, natural gas containing raw material for energy fulfillment in Indonesia is still very central through the use of raw materials from renewable energy is still very low. In Indonesia the potential for renewable energy such as wind energy needs to be optimized. One of the uses of wind energy is through savonius wind turbine as electricity generators. Characteristics of savonius wind turbine with vertical axis rotors which gave a simple shape, and that able to control low speeds. This is in accordance with regions in Indonesi which have low average speeds.         This experimental study, aims to determine the description of wind potential and determine the performance of savonius wind turbines on the coast of Demak regency on the electrical energy produced. Savonius wind turbine used is made of galvalum material in the form of an S type rotor with diameter 1.1 m and height 1.4 m, using pulley transmission system with multiplication ratio 1:6 dan using generator type PMG 200 W. This research uses the method experiment. Data collection in the form of wind speed, humidity, temperature, rotor rotation speed, voltage and electric curret is carried out at 14.30 to 17.30 Western Indonesian Time. Data Analysis in this study uses quantitative descriptive analysis. The result showed the potential of wind on the coast of Demak regency have an average wind speed of 2,02 m/s with a temperature of 31</em><em>,</em><em>34 </em><em><sup>0</sup></em><em>C and humidity of 76,96. And the performance of the installed wind turbine produces the highest power 3.5 watt with an electric power coefficient of 0,181 and tip speed ratio around 1,75. From these result, the potensial of wind with performance savonius turbine can generate electricity used for pond lighting in the village Berahan Kulon Kecamatan Wedung. </em><em></em></p>


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document