Optimal design, implementation and performance improvement of a new wind energy conversion system

Electrical energy demand has been continuously increasing. Depleting fossil fuel reserves, environmental concerns, and insufficiency of conventional generation techniques in meeting growing demand, renewable energy use has been widely adopted in the world. When the application of renewable energy sources in the world considered, it can be seen that wind energy is mostly preferred over other renewable energy sources. Various wind turbines and components are used in wind energy conversion systems. Therefore, research continues on developing optimal wind turbine structure that has maximum efficiency with minimum cost for various environmental conditions. In this thesis, a new prototype wind energy conversion system suitable for urban use is designed and manufactured. The proposed design is modular and has flexible structure. In the new design, an outer gear ring attached to turbine blades is used. In design stage, both the number of blades and the number of tooth in the outer ring are varied to analyze their effect on turbine performance.The designed wind turbine can be operated with different blade numbers and different outer ring tooth numbers. By connecting several small wind turbine modules, it is possible to increase effective area. Thus, the new design can be optimized for regions with different wind speed regimes. 3-blade, 4-blade, 5-blade and 6-blade versions are manufactured and ready to use. Analyses for these versions are completed and results are given in this study. The generator for the new wind power system is selected based on tests of 8 different generators. xviiIn addition, optimal sizing of the proposed systems that minimizes the cost is completed using an optimization algorithm. In optimization studies, it is shown that optimal configurations can be found for different regions. Key words: Wind turbine design, prototype wind turbine, sizing of wind turbines, optimization studies in wind turbines