Monitoring the Performance of a Small-Scale Wind Turbine

ABSTRACT: Small wind turbines are known to generate less than 100 kW of electricity and they are used in farms, homes and small businesses for backup electricity to reduce electricity bills. The present work is concerned with the monitoring of a small scale wind charger which is mounted on the roof of the building of the department of mechanical engineering at Eastern Mediterranean University. Rutland 913 wind charger used for this work has a swept diameter of 910 mm and produces a power output up to 300Wp. A data acquisition system composed of a microcontroller and a series of resistors are used to measure the current and voltage and calculate the corresponding power and wind speed. Using a serial port, data are sent to a personal computer (PC). The data transferred to the PC are recorded to a text file using a purpose-designed program for this system. Two methods of estimating annual energy output (AEO) are introduced and compared with actual data. Data recorded are displayed as a power versus hour curves for each month. Average wind speed for the period of measurements (7 months) was obtained as 4.9 m/s and power produced at this speed was measured as 12.6W. AEO generated was estimated to be 110kWh/yr according to experimental data. By using the swept area and power curve methods, the theoretical AEO was estimated as 103.2kWh/yr and 112.21kWh/yr respectively. Keywords: Small-scale wind turbine, power output, data acquisition system, microcontroller, annual energy output. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………