Small Wind Turbines
Innovation opportunities via
small wind turbine testing
Daniel Feszty
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
8 April 2010
Outline
 Wind energy research at Carleton University
 Wind energy overview
 Areas requiring research
 Potential research at WCEC
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 Wind energy research at Carleton University
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Wind energy research at Carleton University
 Primarily conducted by
–
Rotorcraft Research Group
– 4 Professors, 18 researchers
– Transferring knowledge from helicopters to wind turbines
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Wind energy research at Carleton University
 Prof. Fred Nitzsche
– PhD - Stanford University (1983)
– Thesis on Darrieus wind turbines
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Wind energy research at Carleton University
Strong in experiments:
Scaled wind farm experiment
at Carleton University
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Wind energy research at Carleton University
Strong in computations:
CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations for
a helicopter and a wind turbine
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Wind energy research at Carleton University
Our PhD graduates found employment at:
- Vestas (Denmark): 2
- National Research Council, Ottawa (Wind Energy group): 3
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 Wind energy overview
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Wind energy overview:
Wind energy usage
Wind energy usage in Canada:
30% growth annually!!!
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Wind energy overview:
Wind resources
Mean annual wind speed distribution in Canada (Canadian Wind Atlas)
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Wind energy overview:
Wind resources
Mean annual wind speed distribution in Ontario (Canadian Wind Atlas)
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Wind energy overview:
Classification of wind power
Ontario inland
Most of Canada
Most turbines
built for
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Wind energy overview:
Wind resources
 Category 6 & 7 sites not available

Mostly sold out

Far from big cities
 Category 3-5 sites

Not utilized so far (most of Ontario/Canada)

Lack of efficient wind turbines for them
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Wind energy overview:
Wind turbine types
Two basic types of wind turbines:
Vertical Axis
ADV:
DIS:
works in any wind direction
medium power
Horizontal Axis
very high power
needs to be “yawed”(turned)
into wind direction
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Wind energy overview:
Wind turbine types
Two basic types of wind turbines:
Vertical Axis (no yaw control, medium power, smaller):
Savonius-rotor
Darrieus-rotor
H-rotor
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Wind energy overview:
Wind turbine types
Two basic types of wind turbines:
Horizontal Axis (yaw control, high power, larger):
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Wind energy overview:
Size vs. power
Power from wind grows with D2:
•
P = 0.5 r v3 A = 0.5 r v3 (p D2)/4
 need large turbine!
160 m
1 MW = 300 homes
Diameter [m]
126 m
112 m
80 m
A380
15 m
‘85 ‘87 ‘89 ‘91 ‘93 ‘95 ‘97 ‘99 ‘01 ‘03 ‘06
0.06
0.3
0.5
1.3 1.6 2.0
4.5
5.0
?
8.0
Year
Power [MW]
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Wind energy overview:
Interference effects
Wake interference: 30-40% loss of power when in wake!
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Wind energy overview:
Interference effects
W
3D
Wind
Direction
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Wind energy overview:
Interference effects
Power of the downstream turbine is
reduced by 40%
Wind Direction
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Wind energy overview:
Interference effects
Scaled wind farm experiment
at Carleton University
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Wind energy overview:
Modern Horizontal Axis Turbines


designed for

category 6-7 wind

"clean" flow
growing size (D = 120-160 m) is a problem for

transportation

installation

maintenance

availability
COST!
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The Aeloun Harvester:
Cheap, small turbine for the 3rd world
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 Areas requiring research
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Areas requiring research:
 Smaller turbines for lower category (3-5) wind speeds

Would be very interesting for Ontario/Canada

Cheap, small turbines for 3rd world countries (“Lighting up Africa”)

What size and type?
 Interference effects mitigation:

Special blade design for “dirty” flow?

Actively controlled blades?
 Better wake modelling/prediction

Current wake models overpredict power by about 15%

This means $90 million loss for a 120 turbine farm
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Areas requiring research:
 To answer the above questions, one needs:

Advanced computational methods (for design and optimization)

Full-size experiments to validate these
 For experiments:

Wind tunnels simply not suited (test section too small & short)

Need: “wind testing” instead of “wind tunnel testing”

Carleton University does not have a suitable site for “wind testing”
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 Potential research at
West Carleton Energy Centre (WCEC)
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Potential research at WCEC
 Need for experimental testing
 Carleton University needs large wind exposed site to test
research turbines
 WCEC could be ideal to serve as Carleton’s “wind test
site”

testing small (or scaled) turbines not fitting a wind tunnel

foundation not an issue

turbines on top or at bottom of hill

data used to validate CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics)

CFD used to design better wind turbines
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Potential research at WCEC
 OR: combine solar and wind research?
Thermal upwind power plant
Experimental thermal upwind power plant in Manzanares, Spain, 1985. Tower height
200 m, tower diameter 10 m, diameter of collector roof about 250 m
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 Questions?
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 Questions?
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