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CHAPTER 7 Design and Development of Small Wind Turbines CHAPTER 7 Design and development of small wind turbines Lawrence Staudt Center for Renewable Energy, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. For the purposes of this chapter, “small” wind turbines will be defi ned as those with a power rating of 50 kW or less (approximately 15 m rotor diameter). Small electricity-generating wind turbines have been in existence since the early 1900s, having been particularly popular for providing power for dwellings not yet con- nected to national electricity grids. These turbines largely disappeared as rural electrifi cation took place, and have primarily been used for remote power until recently. The oil crisis of the 1970s led to a resurgence in small wind technology, including the new concept of grid-connected small wind technology. There are few small wind turbine manufacturers with a track record spanning more than a decade. This can be attributed to diffi cult market conditions and nascent technol- ogy. However, the technology is becoming more mature, energy prices are rising and public awareness of renewable energy is increasing. There are now many small wind turbine companies around the world who are addressing the growing market for both grid-connected and remote power applications. The design fea- tures of small wind turbines, while similar to large wind turbines, often differ in signifi cant ways. 1 Small wind technology Technological approaches taken for the various components of a small wind turbine will be examined: the rotor, the drivetrain, the electrical systems and the tower. Of course wind turbines must be designed as a system, and so rotor design affects drivetrain design which affects control system design, etc. and so no component of a wind turbine can be considered in isolation. In general small wind turbines should be designed to IEC61400-2, Design Requirements for Small Wind Turbines [ 2 ]. WIT Transactions on State of the Art in Science and Engineering, Vol 44, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1755-8336 (on-line) doi:10.2495/978-1-84564-205-1/07 258 Wind Power Generation and Wind Turbine Design Figure 1: Annual deployed UK wind systems (credit: British Wind Energy Association). Figure 2: On-grid vs. Off-grid UK wind systems (credit: British Wind Energy Association). WIT Transactions on State of the Art in Science and Engineering, Vol 44, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1755-8336 (on-line) Design and Development of Small Wind Turbines 259 Figure 3: Whisper H40 (credit: AWEA, Southwest Windpower). Figure 4: AIR Marine (credit: AWEA, Southwest Windpower). WIT Transactions on State of the Art in Science and Engineering, Vol 44, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1755-8336 (on-line) 260 Wind Power Generation and Wind Turbine Design 1.1 Small wind system confi gurations Just as has been the case with large wind technology, a number of attempts have been made to design vertical axis wind turbines – none of them commercially suc- cessful as of yet. Proponents of this technology for small wind point out important advantages: the ability to take cope with turbulent wind (as is found more often in small wind applications, due to lower towers, building mounting, etc.) and lower turbine noise. It remains to be seen as to whether a commercially successful verti- cal axis small wind turbine will emerge, and vertical axis machines will not be discussed further. Unlike large wind turbines, which now exclusively use upwind designs (the blades upwind of the tower), there are successful upwind and successful down- wind machines in the small wind turbine market. An early downwind design was the Enertech 1500 1.5 kW machine (which sold about 1200 units in the early 1980s, Fig. 5 ), the forerunner of the AOC 15/50 50 kW turbine (which sold between 500 and 1000 units in the 1980s and 1990s, Fig. 6 ), which was the basis for the current Entegrity EW50. The Scottish company Proven successfully use the downwind approach in its line of turbines ( Fig. 7 ). Virtually all small wind turbines use passive yaw control, i.e. the turbine requires no yaw motors and associated controls to orient the machine into the wind. In the case of upwind machines, a tail is used to keep the rotor upwind of the tower. The tail is often hinged to facilitate overspeed control (see Section 1.2.2). The tail becomes mechanically unwieldy as turbine size increases above Figure 5: Enertech 1500 (credit: American Wind Energy Association). WIT Transactions on State of the Art in Science and Engineering, Vol 44, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1755-8336 (on-line) Design and Development of Small Wind Turbines 261 Figure 6: AOC 15/50 (credit: AWEA, David Parsons). Figure 7: Proven 600W (credit: AWEA, Leslie Moran). WIT Transactions on State of the Art in Science and Engineering, Vol 44, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1755-8336 (on-line) 262 Wind Power Generation and Wind Turbine Design about 8 −10 m rotor diameter. Downwind passive yaw machines can be found up to about 15 m rotor diameter. Large wind turbines virtually are all of the active yaw, upwind design. The upwind design appears more popular. The Jacobs design has been around for many decades ( Fig. 8 ), and Bergey produce a well-known upwind turbine ( Fig. 9 ). Upwind turbines require a tail vane to orient the machine into the wind, whereas downwind turbines naturally track the wind without the need for a tail vane. The rotors on downwind machines are subject to “tower shadow” each time a blade passes behind the tower. The blade briefl y sees reduced and more turbulent winds behind the tower, resulting in cyclical moments on the low-speed shaft and turbine mainframe which do not exist on an upwind machine. This increases fatigue cycles on the turbine. This must be traded off against the simplicity of the downwind design. In large wind turbines driven yaw is needed, and there is no reason not to have the rotor upwind of the tower. 1.2 Small wind turbine rotor design In general the same issues in blade design exist for small turbines as for large wind turbines. These are discussed elsewhere in this book, and so only the unique aspects of small wind turbine blade design will be discussed in this section. These issues Figure 8: Jacobs 10kW (credit: AWEA, Ed Kennel). WIT Transactions on State of the Art in Science and Engineering, Vol 44, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1755-8336 (on-line) Design and Development of Small Wind Turbines 263 Figure 9: Bergey 10kW with tilt-up tower and furling tail (credit: AWEA, Don Marble). can be put into three categories: rotor aerodynamics, rotor overspeed control, and rotor manufacturing considerations. 1.2.1 Rotor aerodynamics In the early days of grid-connected wind turbines, rotors were usually “stall-con- trolled”, i.e. maximum power was limited via aerodynamic stall. As wind turbines grew in size, pitch control has become the universal method to limit power output during high winds. Stall control is still commonly used on small wind turbines. Figure 10 shows two power curves illustrating the two types of power limitation. The reason for the use of stall control is simplicity, and therefore low cost. The blades can be fi xed to the hub without the need for pitch bearings and a pitch mechanism. Few small wind turbines feature pitch control. Using blade pitch to effectively “dump” wind when turbine rated power is reached is a natural and obvious application of blade pitch. Stall control is simple and elegant, although somewhat less effi cient. It is typically used on a constant speed turbine, e.g. one with an asynchronous generator. For example, suppose the blade tip speed is a constant 100 mph. In light winds the blade angle of attack would be very shallow, i.e. the wind is coming directly at the leading edge (the blade pitch angle is only a few degrees). In high winds the blade tip would see wind coming at it from a much steeper angle, and stall would occur, limiting power output with no moving parts. There are certain airfoils that exhibit a particularly useful stalling characteristic (e.g. the NACA44 series) which are commonly used on stall-controlled small wind turbines. WIT Transactions on State of the Art in Science and Engineering, Vol 44, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1755-8336 (on-line) 264 Wind Power Generation and Wind Turbine Design Figure 10: Typical power curves with stall and pitch control. With the advent of grid-tie inverters, stall control is becoming less prevalent on the smaller wind turbines, power curves are beginning to resemble that of the pitch controlled turbine in Fig. 10 , and power limitation accomplished in conjunction with the rotor overspeed control (see discussion below). In this case a stalling rotor design is no longer necessary. It should be noted that it is diffi cult to get the same high aerodynamic effi ciency on small turbines as on large turbines. This has to do with the formation of turbulent boundary layer on the surface of the blade. Towards the leading edge of the blade the boundary layer is laminar, but at some critical distance l across the blade surface the fl ow becomes turbulent. This distance is a function of fl ow velocity ( V ), Reynolds number ( Re ), viscosity ( m ) and density ( m ) as per the following equation: lReV=∗mr ∗ ()/() ( 1) This turbulence reduces pressure drag (the primary effect) and increases friction drag (a secondary effect), with the net effect being a reduction in drag and an improvement in rotor effi ciency. Small wind turbine blades have a small chord length and therefore there is a relatively smaller region across the blade surface where the fl ow is turbulent compared to large turbine blades, hence the higher effi ciency from large turbine blades.
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