Small wind turbines located in urban environment, often suffer from low wind velocity regime and high wind fluctuation.
The low wind regime, leads to increase in blades idle time, a period where no production of power is maintained due to the low torque on the blades.
The high wind fluctuation leads to suboptimal wind turbine working points, as the blades RPM (rounds per minute) is not in its optimal point.
In the present work the problem of low torque in low wind velocity is solved by multi variable torque and power optimization of wind turbine blades geometry in low wind velocity by numerical optimization based on BEM (blade element momentum theory) a method for evaluating blade performance by combining momentum theory with blade element theory.
The problem of suboptimal working point in fluctuating wind is dealt by a new and cheap control method based on switching the load by a solid state relay (SSR).
Switching the load leads to control of the rotor acceleration/deceleration and so acquiring the wanted optimal RPM working point.
The control algorithm and suitable control hardware were implemented in hardware with national instrument controllers (NI) and software (LabVIEW) and tested with commercial wind turbine in the lab and in real wind conditions.
System design, tests and results will be shown in these seminar.
