Data Acquisition for Wind Turbine Design and Analysis using Arduino

Abstract

Wind turbines are widely used nowadays as devices for renewable energy utilization that is the wind energy. Before designing the wind turbine, many parameters must be measured for the best selected design. Theses parameters include wind speed, wind speed variation with height, power generation etc. Thus the use of computer software such as Arduino is very helpful tool to achieve such a task. This work is aimed to show the application of Arduino to measure the environmental parameters that affect the power generation of wind turbines such as wind speed. The code used to programme the instruments and sensors are shown. The power measured experimentally based on the measured parameters are shown. Results show that Arduino can get accurate measurements. And by using suitable software it provides full calculations of the design parameters. The data are presented in an excel spread sheet where it can be used later for the design procedure. The use of Arduino requires writing codes for data acquisition and processing. Critical data for wind power calculations are shown. The height of 15 m is achieved and the wind speed, voltage, current and power is calculated. By comparing the data obtained by Arduino to published data for Kuwait the results found comparable. The Arduino value for wind speed in June at height of 10.0 m is 8.0 m/s, however, the average value of wind speed in June is 5.7 m/s and the maximum value of wind speed in June is 20.0 m/s at the same height.