Analysis and assessment of a small capacity horizontal axis wind turbine : Comoros Island case study

Abstract

The use of renewable resources is growing since fossil fuels have already been exhausted and they will last only for a few years to come. Wind power is one form of renewable energy that can be harnessed using wind turbines. Many improvements in the design of wind turbines are continuously increasing, and still, a lot must be made. The primary objective of this project is to conduct a performance analysis (power coefficient, Reynolds number, turbulent level) with different airfoils for a small capacity horizontal axis wind turbine. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is adopted as a method of analysis. However, CFD procedures are hardware intensive and computationally expensive. Furthermore, freely available simple tools called QBlade is computationally inexpensive, and it can be used for performance and design analyses of horizontal and vertical axis wind turbines. In the present research, an effort has been made to use QBlade for performance analysis of a small capacity horizontal axis wind turbine using selected prospective airfoils. In this study, four airfoils (namely, NACA 4412, SG6043, SD7062 and S833) have been selected and investigated in QBlade at different Reynolds numbers, and different tip speed ratio. Overall, it has been found that the power coefficient values of NACA 4412 at different tip speed ratios are higher compared to the other three airfoils. However, in terms of lift and drag, SG6043 showing the highest lift coefficient compared to the other airfoils. The wind resource in Comoros altered through the year with a wind speed of 4 m/s to 5.5 m/s. Based on the performance analysis from QBlade, NACA4412 was selected to design a small capacity horizontal axis wind turbine. The range of power generated from our wind turbine is 0.5 kW at 3 m/s to 1.2 kW at 6 m/s. with this wind condition a small size of a wind turbine is suitable to satisfy the project of the design and analysis of low capacity horizontal axis wind turbine at any location. Moreover, the design of small capacity horizontal axis wind turbines will be helpful to maintain stable electricity which is still one of the problems facing Comoros Island.