Aerodynamic modeling of simplified wind turbine rotors targeting small-scale applications in Sri Lanka

Abstract

A design and optimization procedure of simplified wind turbine rotors for small-scale applications is presented. The need for this research has arisen from the recent national initiative of the government of Sri Lanka titled ‘Battle for Wind Energy’ in promoting small scale grid connected wind plants for electricity customers under Net Metering scheme. The main objective of this research is to assist local developers to design optimum rotors for given electrical generators (as determined by customer requirements), suitable for wind characteristics at specific locations. Another objective is to enhance local manufacturing capabilities by providing a design option of a simplified rotor blade geometry. A study on the correlation between population density of electricity customers and wind energy potentials was carried out to categorize the demand centres based on wind energy potentials in proposing series of small-scale wind turbine designs. A unique and improved rotor design procedure is presented which attempts to match the point of maximum performance of a rotor (design tip speed ratio) with the design wind speed of a given location by considering generator performance. The new design procedure showed successful convergence on a unique blade diameter for each rotor configuration that allowed the design tip speed ratio to match the design wind speed. The performance evaluation of rotor designs showed that high solidity rotors work better on the low wind potential region while low solidity rotors dominate medium and high wind potential regions. The performance reductions of simplified rotor designs are not significant and therefore would be an effective way to enhance value addition through local manufacture. Problem statement•Lack of a rotor design procedure that considers generator performance.•Lack of a rotor design procedure for blades with an optimum simplified geometry.•Geographical mismatch between high resource sites and location of electricity consumers in Sri Lanka.•Lack of optimized small-scale wind turbine designs for sites with different wind potentials in Sri Lanka.•Limited opportunities for local manufacture in Sri Lanka. Major novel contributions•Identification of geographical locations most suitable for promoting small-scale wind turbines.•Creation of rotor design procedures for optimized and simplified blade geometries considering generator performance.•Creation of optimized and simplified wind turbine rotor designs for different wind potential regions in Sri Lanka.