iii

ABSTRACT
Large Scale Wind Turbines (LSWTs) have been extensively examined for
decades but very few studies have been conducted on the small scale wind turbines
(SSWTs) especially for the applications near ground level where wind speed is of
order of few meters per second. This study provides the first systematic effort towards
design and development of SSWTs (rotor diameter<50 cm) targeted to operate at low
wind speeds (<5 m/s). An inverse design and optimization tool based on Blade
Element Momentum theory is proposed. The utility and efficiancy of the tool was
validated by demonstrating a 40 cm diameter small-scale wind energy portable
turbine (SWEPT) operating in very low wind speed range of 1 m/s-5 m/s with
extremely high power coefficient. In comparison to the published literature, SWEPT
is one of the most efficient wind turbines at the small scale and very low wind speeds
with the power coefficient of 32% and overall efficiency of 21% at its rated wind
speed of 4.0 m/s. It has very low cut-in speed of 1.7 m/s. Wind tunnel experiments
revealed that SWEPT has rated power output of 1 W at 4.0 m/s, and it is capable of
producing power output up to 9.3 W at wind speed of 10 m/s. The study was further
extended to develop a piezoelectric wind turbine which operates below 2.0 m/s wind
speed. The piezoelectric wind turbine of overall dimension of 100mm x 78mm x
65mm is capable of producing peak electric power of about 450 microwatt at the rated
wind speed of 1.9 m/s.


iv

CONTENTS
Sl. No. Title Page No.


1
1.1
Introduction
Summary
1
2
2. Literature Review
2.1. Introduction 3
2.2. History
2.3. Summary 4
3. First Generation Small Scale Wind Energy Portable Turbine 5
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Swept Design Specification And Construction
3.3. Experimental Setup 7

3.4. Results And Discussion 9
3.4.1 Mechanical Power By Swept
3.4.2 Coefficient Of Performance 11
3.4.3 Over All Performance 12
3.5. Summary 13
4 Diffuser Augmented Swept 15
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Diffuser :Design Optimization And construction
4.3 Solution Strategy 16
4.4 Diffuser construction 18
4.5 Velocity Augmentation 19
4.6 Experimental Setup 20
4.7 Power by Ducted swept 21
4.8 Summary 22
5 Conclusion 24
6 References 26


v

LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. No. Description Page No
3.1 Blade design configuration with all dimensions in cm. 6
3.2 Experimental set-up with the schematic diagram 8
3.3 Angular speed at the wind speed at 3.2 m/s. 10
3.4 Torque and rpm relationship.
3.5 Mechanical power of SWEPT at different wind speed. 11
3.6 Coefficient of Performance vs. Tip speed ratio. 12
3.7 Angular speed as a function of load resistance. 13
4.1 An initial design of diffuser modeled using CFD.) 16
4.2 Two-dimensional computational domain with boundary
conditions.
17
4.3
4.4
Mesh independency test.
Diffuser made up of (a) metal sheet and (b) fiber reinforced
plastics.
18
4.5 Comparison of velocity augmentation factor obtained
numerically and experimentally.
19
4.6 Schematic diagram of wind tunnel experimental set-up used to
test the performance of the diffuser augmented wind turbine.
20
4.7 Power output of diffuser augmented SWEPT at different loads
and wind speeds.
21
4.8 Power output of diffuser augmented SWEPT at different loads and
wind speeds.
22