Investigations on a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Abstract

Worldwide interest in renewable energy systems has increased dramatically, due to environmental concerns like climate change and other factors. Wind power is a major source of sustainable energy, and can be harvested using both horizontal and vertical axis wind turbines.

In current scenario the horizontal axis wind turbine is current trend for wind energy utilization for power generating systems. Since the horizontal axis wind turbine is only applicable for higher wind velocity even for domestic application, also it is higher in cost wise and also complex system. To overcome this problem and to utilize wind energy even at low velocity, at low cost vertical axis wind turbine is the only alternative to overcome current problems.

In the presence study, introduction and literature review pertaining to vertical axis wind turbine is presented. Multi blade vertical axis Savonius wind turbine system was designed, fabricated and installed at M/s Techen Polkcon, Sanand, Ahmedabad. On the system, parametric study was carried out experimentally by changing angle of vanes, number of vanes and wind velocity. Analysis concluded that, the wind turbine system under consideration works best with 5 no of vanes oriented at 600 and gives max efficiency 28%.