Starting improvement of micro-wind turbines operating in low wind speed regions

The study deals with the design and optimization of external and internal geometry of micro-wind turbines blades. A specified objective function which consists of the power coefficient and the starting time was defined and the genetic algorithm optimization technique in conjunction with the blade-element momentum theory was adopted to find the geometry of the blades including the distributions of the chord, the twist angle and also the shell thickness. Moreover, the allowable stress of the blades was considered as a constraint to the objective function. Results show that a reasonable compromise is achievable such that the starting time of the blades reduces noticeably in return for a small drop in the power coefficient. The significant improvement of the hollow blades over the solid ones indicates that the power coefficient and the starting performance could be improved through the appropriate distributions of the considered decision variables, i.e. the chord, the twist angle and also the shell thickness.     

A convective wind resource model for Solar Vortex power generation

ABSTRACT

Climate change has increased the need for clean, nonpolluting energy sources to decrease dependence on fossil fuels. Alternative energy sources, mainly solar and horizontal wind, have been the primary focus for producing clean energy. New technologies are being developed, such as the Solar Vortex (SoV), which was developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and relies on a vertical wind resource to generate power. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has resource models representing solar and horizontal wind resources across the 48 United States. This research developed a vertical wind resource model that is comparable in resolution to NREL’s solar and horizontal wind resource models and uses the model for estimating power output for the SoV. This model complements NREL’s existing resource models and supports the deployment of an additional clean energy generation technology. The model was applied to Mesa, Arizona to find feasible sites for a small-scale vertical wind farm.     

Performance improvement of airfoils for wind blade with the groove

This study was a basic one to explore how much the aerodynamic characteristics of wind blade improve. The extent of improvement according to the shapes of groove placed on the surface of airfoil (NACA0015) was analyzed through computational analysis. A commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, the ANSYS Fluent 13, was used in this study. In this study, regarding with the positions and shapes of groove, the end of groove was placed at a certain distance (length, l) from both the front and back of separation starting point, the depth and the width were designated as h and d respectively. Analysis was conducted at the 7° angle of attack under the following conditions; the thickness (δ) of boundary layer to the depth (h) of groove ratio (h/δ) 0.6–1.0, the depth (h) of groove to the width (d) of groove ratio (h/d) 0.1–1.4, and the length (l) between the end of groove and separation point to the thickness (δ) of boundary layer ratio (l/δ) ?0.5–0.5. Among these conditions, the best improvement of lift to drag ratio, standing at 15.3%, was under h/δ = 1.0, h/d = 0.12, and l/δ = –0.5 (7° AOA, Re = 360k). In addition, throughout the range of angle of attack, 2–14°, lift to drag ratio improved by 0.8%, 5.1%, 3.2%, and 1.8% each when Reynolds numbers were 280k, 360k, 450k, and 530k. It is also confirmed that the shape of groove contributed to recovering velocity around airfoil wall and the lift to drag ratio improvements by groove were maintained at the given range of Reynolds number and around the angle of attack, 7°.     

Wind energy potential analysis for Thailand: Uncertainty from wind maps and sensitivity to turbine technology

Rapid development of wind energy has been witnessed in Thailand. However, different wind resource maps (over land) have brought great uncertainty to wind energy planning. Here, four important mesoscale wind maps were considered: DEDP (2001), World Bank (2001), Manomaiphiboon et al. (2010) of JGSEE, and DEDE (2010). The wind maps were first harmonized to a common grid at 100 m and then compared. The earlier wind maps (DEDP and World Bank) are shown to represent the lower and upper limits of predicted speed, respectively, while JGSEE and DEDE tend to be more moderate with predictions statistically closer to observations. A consolidated wind map was constructed based on their median and shown to have the best prediction performance. It was then used for the technical potential analysis, in which three large (2-MW) turbine models (two conventional and one designed for low wind speed) were considered. By GIS techniques, any land areas not feasible for large wind turbines were excluded, and the corresponding overall onshore technical potential ranges between 50 and 250 GW, depending on map and turbine model. Considering only economically feasible turbines (with capacity factors of 20%) and the median-based map, the final technical potential equals 17 GW when using the low-wind-speed model but is reduced to 5 GW with the conventional models, adequately meeting the national wind energy target of 3 GW by the year 2036. The results suggest a strong sensitivity of estimated technical potential to turbine technology and a suitability of low-wind-speed turbines for wind conditions in Thailand.     

An optimized airfoil geometry for vertical-axis wind turbine applications

ABSTRACT

In this work, a new airfoil shape optimized for vertical-axis wind turbine applications is proposed. Different airfoil shapes have been analyzed with JavaFoil, a panel method software. Then, the results from the analysis have been used to optimize the performance of the new airfoil shape. Afterward, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of the proposed airfoil, UO-17-LDA, are run for different angles of attack to provide insight into the flow field and the mechanisms related to this increase in performance. The UO-17-LDA airfoil presents a high lift-to-drag ratio and a delayed stall angle with respect to the original FX-63-137 airfoil, making it suitable for vertical-axis wind turbine applications. This increase in performance has been verified by comparing two VAWT designs with the original and the proposed airfoil using a double-multiple streamtube model. Finally, the practicality of JavaFoil for the comparison of different airfoil geometries has been verified, as it is capable of obtaining results for a wide number of flow conditions in small computational times and with a user-friendly interface. Nevertheless, the results diverge from the actual solution for high angles of attack (beyond stall). Hence, the time and effort required to perform CFD simulations is justified to gain insight into the actual behavior of a particular airfoil, as well as to obtain a richer analysis of the flow field and the mechanisms related to the airfoil performance.     

A conjoint analysis of landholder preferences for reward-based land-management contracts in Kapingazi watershed, Eastern Mount Kenya

Unsustainable land-use decisions and agricultural practices have become the key drivers of deteriorating watershed services in developing countries. However, landholders may have little or no incentives to take these impacts into account in their decision-making process. In recent years, reward-based provision of environmental services has emerged as an important market-based incentive for motivating landholders to adopt environmentally friendly land-use changes and agricultural practices. In this regard, for instance, the Pro-Poor Rewards for Environmental Services in Africa (PRESA) project has emerged as a large network to support and facilitate reward mechanisms in Africa. However, in many African rural settings, little is known about landholder attitudes and preferences related to the alternative land-management schemes. Using locally identified sets of six key land-management attributes, this paper applies conjoint methods to evaluate landholder preferences towards alternative land-management schemes aimed at enhancing the provision of watershed services in the River Kapingazi catchment in central Kenya. Data were collected from primary sources through focus groups and a questionnaire based conjoint survey. Three conjoint models were used; a traditional conjoint ratings model, a binary logit model, and an ordered logit model. Results from the focus groups indicated that shortage of water for both domestic use and irrigation was perceived as the most acute environmental problem in the area. Deforestation, poor river bank management and agricultural practices were identified as the major causes of the problem. Results from conjoint models show that the three principal attributes influencing landholder's ratings and probability of adopting the proposed land management options were 'size of land area to be committed', 'length of contract period', and 'granting or prohibiting rights to harvest environmental products from the committed land'. Thus, these attributes should be the focal points in designing land-management contract for watershed services in the study area.     

Nonlinear control of a wind turbine based on nonlinear estimation techniques for maximum power extraction

This work proposes nonlinear estimators with nonlinear controllers, for variable speed wind turbine (VSWT) considering that either the wind speed measurement is not available or not accurate. The main objective of this work is to maximize the energy capture from the wind and minimizes the transient load on the drive train. Controllers are designed to adjust the generated torque for maximum power output. Estimation of effective wind speed is required to achieve the above objectives. In this work the estimation of effective wind speed is done by using the Modified Newton Rapshon (MNR), Neural Network (NN) trained by different training algorithms and nonlinear time series based estimation. Initially the control strategies applied was the classical ATF (Aerodynamic torque feed forward) and ISC (Indirect speed control), however due their weak performance and unmodeled WT disturbances, nonlinear static and dynamic feedback linearization techniques with the above wind speed estimators are proposed.