Renewable Energy Systems

Lecture 2
Introduction to Wind Energy Conversion Systems

Further work:
Read Introduction to wind energy systems a paper
available at the course website.
1

Available Wind Resource:

Historical Canadian climate data is available at
http://climate.weather.gc.ca/index_e.html
Select a city & month and download the data.
Get data for 12 months and extract
hourly wind speed in m/s. (at 10m)
Import data into Homer for analysis.
(Download homer legacy version from homerenergy.com)
Free version is v 2.68 (classic). Free Homer pro is also available for 30 days.

St. Johns wind speed data)

Weibull probability density function

Tall tower, higher wind speed.

5

Energy in the Wind

System losses

Typical values

Best Cp ~ 0.4

10

Types of wind turbines

-Horizontal axis

-Vertical axis

- Single blade
- Two blades
- Three blades (Most popular)
- wind flower
- Darrieus
- Savonius
- Variable geometry
- Twisted savonius

11

bergey.com

1000W = Cp* 0.6125 *11*11*11 *3.14 *2.5*2.5/4

Cp= 0.25

Looks too high for a small wind turbine

12

GE large wind turbines

1500000 = Cp *0.6125 *14*14*14*3.14*77*77/4

Cp = 0.1917 (Ok for a large wind turbine)
13

http://www.weican.ca/
14

Many Wind Turbines Design Ideas have been tried.

15

Windside.com

selsam.com

Marlec

Gearless WT
(enercon.de)
16
http://www.tamiya.com/english/products/75021loopwing/

Wind Pump

Wind Mill Corn grinding

VVAWT

Stupid Design

Two-bladed turbine

Single bladed wind turbine

17

Darrieus WT

Savonius WT
18

Large and small wind turbines

19

Ropatec.it

20

SeaTitan 10 MW Wind Turbine

21

http://www.windpowermonthly.com/10-biggest-turbines

Inside a wind turbine there is mostly mechanical and civil engineering stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiwP_Vlr6H0

22

Wind direction changes with time. A site wind rose provides that information.

Anemometer

Wind vane

Wind turbines need Yaw Control for changing wind direction23

Wind turbine yaw mechanism

Large wind turbines have active yaw control using yaw motors.
Yaw rate is kept low to have a minimum gyroscopic forces.
Small wind turbines yaw is achieved using a tail.
24

Cp varies with the wind speed or tip speed ratio.

25

CF= kWHr produced in a year / (Rated power *8765)

Power output of a wind turbine is less in most likely wind speeds.

26

Capacity Factors for Utility Scale Generators Not Primarily Using Fossil Fuels (www.eia.gov)

Above table shows that all renewable energy sources have a low capacity factor. Small wind turbines and
PV installations have even lower CF than shown above.
Say you have a 6kW wind turbine. CF=0.2. i.e. It may produce 0.2*6*8765= 10518kWhr/y (good for month)

Say you have 10m2 south facing PV installation on a roof at 47. solar cells efficiency =12%. Maximum solar
radiation is 1kW/m2, so installed capacity is 0.12*10=1.2kW. Say capacity factor is 0.3. i.e. you expect to
have 0.3*1.2*8765= 3155.4 kWhr/year. (after losses in battery and inverters output may be 2000 kWhr/y.
27

A detailed analysis is required to estimate output of a wind turbine.

Multiply these two curves and take sum to determine output power. next lecture28

A simple large wind turbine control.

Squirrel cage induction generator based wind turbine control.

A common wind turbine configuration.

29

Doubly fed induction generator based wind turbine control.

30

Permanent magnet generator based wind turbine control.

31

Small wind turbines are commonly used to charge batteries.

Most of small wind turbines are based on permanent magnet alternator.
A diversion controller is needed when batteries are fully charged.
These can be connected to the grid using grid-tie inverters.
32
=> More details in next lectures