A novel small scale efcient wind turbine for power generation

N.A. Ahmed
Aerospace Engineering, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 29 May 2012
Accepted 18 January 2013
Available online 21 February 2013
Keywords:
Wind turbine
Renewable energy
Power generation
CFD
a b s t r a c t
A proof of concept study of a novel wind turbine that overcomes some of the deciencies and combines
the advantages of the conventional horizontal and vertical axis wind turbines is presented in this paper.
The study conducted using computational uid dynamics and wind tunnel tests clearly demonstrate that
such a proposition is feasible and a low cost, low noise, safe and easy to operate but enhanced perfor-
mance wind turbine for small scale power generation in low wind speed is viable.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Wind as a source of renewable energy offers an increasingly
viable solution to one of the most pressing issues of our time, that
is, pollution free electricity for sustainable living. The continued
dependence on depleting fossil fuel sources or nuclear power has
the potential to wreck the worlds economy and security. If the
issue is not addressed with a sense of urgency, then the havoc that
the recent nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan of 2011 or oil
spills of the Gulf of Mexico of 2010 caused, will pale in comparison
threatening mankinds very existence.
In the quest of using wind as a renewable source of energy,
increasing attention is given to the production of electricity using
small wind turbines for domestic and industrial buildings. In the
state of New South Wales of Australia, for example, laws have been
proposed [1] to allow windmills with a generating capacity of
10 kWor less to be erected in residential areas, and 60 kW in rural
and industrial areas with the addition of solar panels as an option
for domestic power generation. A height limit of 3 mabove the roof
line will be imposed and turbines will have to be at least 25 mfrom
neighbouring properties. As with solar panels, home owners will be
able to sell surplus power they generate to the electricity grid,
protecting them from skyrocketing power prices. Under the plan,
families intending to install a wind turbine would lodge a 10-day
complying development application with the local council. Strict
noise and location controls would ensure neighbourhoods are not
turned into turbine jungles. These steps are intended to make it
easier for property owners to install wind and solar systems turn-
ing suburbs and rural areas into renewable energy harvesting areas
with no, or minimal environmental and local amenity impacts.
In the USA, small scale residential wind turbines are allowed in
parts of New York. A ve storey affordable housing apartment
building in the South Bronx, in New York, for example, has
deployed 10 kW wind turbines to supplement the facilitys con-
ventional power usage in the buildings hall ways, elevators and
other common areas.
Despite these positive developments, full exploitation of wind
turbine technology for domestic use will be possible only when
wind turbines become efcient at low speed and can be operated
safely with little or no noise and have the capacity to run without
shut-down under moderate to extreme variations in wind
conditions.
The Aerodynamics research teamat the University of NewSouth
Wales has been actively exploring various approaches to harness
renewable energy for general house hold usage and reduce carbon
foot print to the environment [2e19]. To compliment such efforts,
the present project was formulated with the objective of develop-
ing efcient and effective small scale wind turbines. The author has
already outlined qualitatively the concept of such a wind turbine in
a plenary address at the International Conference on Renewable
Energies and Power Quality held in March, 2012 in Spain [20].
The present paper provides more qualitative support to that
proposition. E-mail address: n.ahmed@unsw.edu.au.
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Renewable Energy
j ournal homepage: www. el sevi er. com/ l ocat e/ renene
0960-1481/$ e see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2013.01.023
Renewable Energy 57 (2013) 79e85
2. The novel wind turbine
2.1. The rationale behind the concept
Harnessing wind energy has always been accomplished by two
main types of wind turbine, namely the horizontal axis wind tur-
bine and the vertical axis wind turbine. The two have been com-
peting with each other in terms of efciency, ease of maintenance,
environmental safety and aesthetic looks.
The horizontal axis wind turbine is known for its high efciency
when facing the direction of the wind. However, under high wind
conditions, the blades fail in ap wise bending of the rotor blade as
they approach the speeds higher than it is designed for, a common
occurrence observed in wind farms. This problem is prevented by
having to stall, wasting untapped power. The gearbox of the HAWT
is also located at the top of tower, making it difcult to access for
installation and maintenance. To the environmentalists, the tower
is not desirable, as the blades pose a threat to fowls.
The vertical axis wind turbine promises the versatility of being
able to capture the wind from all directions without having to stall
under high wind conditions. The location of its generator and
gearbox are housed at ground level for easy access during main-
tenance due to its design. Given a wider range of designs, it is also
aesthetically pleasing to the eye. However, due to the circular cycle
of motion, the vertical axis wind turbine often have a portion of its
blades constantly backtracking against the wind, making efciency
its major disadvantage, and lowering it by as much as 30 times
compared to horizontal axis wind turbine.
The proposed novel wind turbine is an attempt to overcome
some of the deciencies but retain the advantages of both the
horizontal and vertical axis wind turbines. The conguration is
simple and requires mainly an additional cowling with air guide
vanes enclosing a rotor used in a horizontal axis wind turbine.
However, the whole conguration would be installed parallel or
aligned to the wind direction in a manner that a vertical axis wind
turbine would be oriented and guide the wind to the rotor in an
efcient manner.
2.2. Conguration
The novel wind turbine conceived can be briey described using
the schematic presented in Fig. 1. The wind turbine, 1, is mounted
on the turbine support structure, 2, with direction vanes, 3, to direct
the wind towards the turbine blades, 4. This arrangement makes
the wind turbine operate like a horizontal axis wind turbine. The
turbine blades can be of xed or variable pitch. A second row of
counter rotating blades can also be used to improve efciency, if
needed. The surrounding structure or the cowling, 5, directs the air
ow to provide improved conversion of the wind energy through
the turbine blades into either mechanical or electrical energy.
Mechanical or electrical devices can be mounted at the base of the
structure, 6, which allow ease of maintenance and lighter support
structures for the turbine. The speed of the turbine can be con-
trolled by rotating the surrounding structure, 5, varying the turbine
blade pitch, 4, or varying the directional vanes, 3. Flow modifying
structures attached to, 5, can also be varied to control turbine
speed. The shape of the surrounding structure, 5, of the turbine
conditions the ow and minimises the impact of sudden gusts on
the turbine blades and facilitate the increase of the air velocity at
the turbine blade. This would result in improved low wind speed
start up and overall efciency. A protective screen, 7, can be
included to protect the turbine from bird strikes. Part or all of the
Fig. 1. Schematic of a novel wind turbine.
Fig. 2. Schematic of the numerical model. CD constriction diameter; CH cowling
height; COA Cowling outlet angle; VG Vane gap.
Fig. 3. Mesh topology of the proposed wind turbine conguration.
N.A. Ahmed / Renewable Energy 57 (2013) 79e85 80
surrounding structure, 5, could be rotated to face the direction of
the wind by any external motor and direction system such as any
mechanical wind vane. The vertical wind turbine, 1, combined with
the surrounding structure, 5, also will help decrease noise levels by
acting as a noise absorbing chamber.
3. Proof of concept investigation
The success of the concept proposed depends on ensuring that
wind from the surrounding atmosphere can be guided to the tur-
bine rotors with minimum losses. This involves determining the
optimum geometry of the structure with the goal of achieving the
highest velocity at the constriction where the rotor will be located.
The proof of concept nature of the work, therefore did not entail
modelling of the ow eld in the presence of rotor or the roof
Fig. 4. Flow eld with cowling outlet at angles of 5

and 50

.
0
10
20
30
40
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
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c
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i
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W
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S
p
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(
%
)
Cowling outlet angle (degrees)
Fig. 5. Increase in wind speed with changes in cowling angle.
Fig. 6. Flow elds for different turning vanes gaps (a) 5 mm (b) 20 mm.
N.A. Ahmed / Renewable Energy 57 (2013) 79e85 81
boundary layer. The present work was, therefore, undertaken to
explore such geometrical conguration and identify the key con-
guration parameters of the cowling using computational uid
dynamics (CFD) and then validating the results through wind
tunnel experiments.
3.1. Identifying the key conguration parameters using CFD
Since CFD as a research tool is especially cost effective and
exible, it was decided to use this mode of investigation to establish
the interrelations between the various important geometrical pa-
rameters of the novel concept, such as cowling outlet angle turning
vane gap, and constriction diameter where the rotor will be located
(Fig. 2).
As the ow features and variables of interests of this study are
on the global scale, the Reynolds-averaged NaviereStokes (RANS)
equations, which model the turbulence rather than solve it, were
considered of sufcient accuracy to describe the air motions. The
RNG k-epsilon turbulence model was selected to close the RANS
equations because of its superior overall performance among the
eddy viscosity models in modelling internal turbulent ows [21].
The discretization and computation of the RANS equations and the
turbulence closure model was conducted using ANSYS FLUENT. A
time resolution of 0.05 s was found sufciently small enough to
capture the ow features of interest since halving the time step
further did not have any signicant inuence on the numerical
results.
Fig. 3 shows the mesh topology of the proposed wind turbine.
The cowling was maintained at a constant height of 180 mm.
Meshes were rened and were denser at the critical areas. These
were at the turning vanes at the top and constriction at the cowling.
For mesh renements, an area of inuence was created using CFX-
Mesh, and area with an ination layer was set along the surface
with a default body spacing of 15 mm. The default face spacing had
angular resolution of 30

with minimum and maximum lengths of

1 mm and 15 mm respectively.
For residential areas, the wind speed is expected to be low. This
consideration led to conducting numerical simulations for wind
speed of 5 m/s.
3.1.1. Cowling outlet angle
Numerical simulations were conducted at six outlet angle of 5

,
15

, 20

, 30

, 40

and 50

respectively. During these simulations,

the dimensions of the turning vane gap and constriction diameter
were kept at 15 mm and 75 mm respectively.
The main aim of these simulations was to determine for each of
the six cowling outlet angles the highest velocity occurring within
the symmetry plane at the constriction diameter. For demonstra-
tive purposes, the ow eld with the smallest and the largest
cowling outlet angles are shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 5 was plotted with the collated values to show the per-
centage increase of wind velocity at the constrictionwith respect to
the inlet wind speed of 5 m/s. From this gure, a sharp percentage
increase in velocity at low cowling outlet angles is observed. The
steepness of the curve then drops and the increase in velocity
Fig. 8. Flow elds with constriction diameters of 55 mm and 105 mm (a) 55 mm (b) 105 mm.
30
35
40
45
50
0 5 10 15 20 25
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i
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W
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S
p
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a
t

(
%
)
Turning Gap
Fig. 7. Increase in wind speed with changes in turning vane gap.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
50 60 70 80 90 100 110
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(
%
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Constriction diameter (mm)
Fig. 9. Increase in wind speed with changes in constriction diameter.
N.A. Ahmed / Renewable Energy 57 (2013) 79e85 82
becomes gradual and peaks at around the cowling angle of 30

after
which the curve appears to reach a plateau making higher cowling
outlet angles more or less ineffective.
3.1.2. Turning vane gap
Variation in the turning vane gaps was simulated to see which
conguration would be the most effective in redirecting the wind
from the atmosphere to the constriction where the rotor will be
located.
Four numerical simulation models were constructed with
turning vane gaps of 5 mm, 10 mm, 15 mm and 20 mm respectively
between each turning vane cascade. During these numerical sim-
ulations the cowling outlet angle and constriction diameter were
xed at 30

and 75 mm respectively. Fig. 6(a) and (b) are presented

to show the ow elds for the lowest and highest turning vane
gaps.
To examine the effect of the turning vane gaps on the increase
in velocity from wind speed of 5 m/s at the constriction, Fig. 7
was plotted. From this gure it is evident that the increase
in velocity is the highest for the turning vane cascade with
a 5 mm gap.
3.1.3. Constriction diameter at cowling
Maintaining the shape of the model, only the diameter of the
constriction was altered. A cowling angle of 30

and a 10 mm gap
cascade for turning vane was used.
Fig. 11. External and internal views of the turbine cowling (lower portion).
Fig. 10. Two views of the turning vanes (upper portion).
N.A. Ahmed / Renewable Energy 57 (2013) 79e85 83
Numerical simulations were conducted on six numerical con-
gurations, with constriction diameters of 55 mm, 65 mm, 75 mm,
85 mm, 95 mm and 105 mm respectively. For these results, as is
expected, the model with the narrowest constriction had the
highest percentage increase in wind speed with reference to the
inlet or atmospheric wind speed of 5 m/s. Results for the con-
striction diameters of 55 mm and 105 mm are shown in Fig. 8(a)
and (b).
Fig. 9 shows the percentage in wind speed as a function of
constriction diameter. The trend from this gure is almost a linear
decrease with constriction diameter.
3.2. Wind tunnel tests for validation
From CFD results, it was evident that as the cowling angle was
increased from 20

to 30

, very little increase, of around only 3% in

velocity with respect to original wind velocity of 5 m/s was
observed. To implement a conguration of cowling angle of 30

would, however, require more material, and would not be sufcient

to justify the additional material costs associated in production in
practice. From this cost and manufacturing consideration, it was
decided to build the prototype with a cowling angle of 20

, turning
vane gap of 10 mm and constriction diameter of 105 mm to verify
and validate the results from the numerical simulation. The CAD
model was produced in Pro-E Wildre.
As shown in Fig. 10(a) and (b), the turning vanes were sand-
witched between two anges in a small steel pipe section. This
pipe section was bolted onto a vertical perspex pipe. The base of
this arrangement was attached to the turbines cowling, Fig. 11(a)
and (b), lathed froma PVC pipe. Bolts 8.5 mm long were screwed to
the base of the cowling that acted as a stand for the experimental
model, lifting the cowling above ground level to allow air at the
outlet to escape. The nal assembled view of the prototype is
shown in Fig. 12.
To measure the static pressure, four holes were drilled 110 mm
from the base of the cowling onto the front, back and sides of the
cowling. This enabled the pressure measurements to be taken
across this measurement plane, with measurement locations as
shown in Fig. 13.
Wind tunnel tests were conducted at the open-jet, open-circuit
wind tunnel [22] of the Aerodynamics Laboratory of the University
of New South Waless to provide initial support to the viability of
the concept of the novel wind turbine performance. The overall test
set-up with the test model and the wind tunnel is shown in Fig. 14.
After the experimental rig setup and instrument calibrations
were completed, the wind turbine conguration was subjected to
the constant wind tunnel speed of 5 m/s, recorded by a Pitot-static
tube situated at the mouth of the wind-tunnel. Brass pipes were
used to acquire the total and static pressures through the model.
The pipes were cut to the required length and bent as shown in
Fig. 15, calibrated, and traversed across the planes of interest. A
digital linear gauge with a clamp attached was used to record lo-
cations of various points across the measurement planes. A micro-
processor based precision measuring instrument, FCO510 Micro-
Manometer, for low range differential pressures down to a resolu-
tion of 0.001 Pa was used to record ow velocity. The instrument
also had a data logging facility to store results that were down-
loaded via a RS232 port.
Fig. 13. Measurement locations.
Fig. 14. The open-jet wind tunnel and test set up. Fig. 12. Final assembled view of the prototype for wind tunnel test.
N.A. Ahmed / Renewable Energy 57 (2013) 79e85 84
The results obtained from CFD and wind tunnels for the same
measurement plane were then compared and presented in Fig. 16.
There is slightly a higher prediction in CFD results, but the overall
agreement between CFD and wind tunnel experiment is pretty
good.
4. Conclusions
The study conducted in this study involving computational
studies and wind tunnel tests clearly demonstrates the viability of
the novel wind turbine proposed for domestic and industrial ap-
plications. The study also suggests that it is possible to direct wind
into the constriction area where the horizontal axis wind turbine
would be located efciently by appropriate combination of cowling
angle, turning vane gap and cowling diameter. This will pave the
way for a lowcost, lownoise, safe and easy to operate but enhanced
performance wind turbine for small scale power generation in low
wind speed.
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Experiment
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Fig. 16. Velocity comparisons in the measurement cross section.
Fig. 15. Brass pipes for measuring static and total pressure.
N.A. Ahmed / Renewable Energy 57 (2013) 79e85 85