Design of a micro wind turbine and its economic feasibility study for residential power generation in built-up areas

Abstract

To provide an alternative to the fossil fuels, finding innovative engineering design in utilizing the renewable energy sources are paramount. Although there are abundant of wind energy available in the built-up areas, the application of wind turbines to harness power efficiently is very limited. Apart from rooftop solar panel for residential power generation, a vertical axis wind turbine can also be used to supplement the domestic power demand due to its low-wind operational capability. Despite of several commercially available small turbines, no study has been reported on their effectiveness in built-up areas. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to develop a single stage drag-based multi-blade small vertical axis wind turbine and analyse its economic aspect for implementation in the metropolitan built-up areas in Australia. Study indicates that one turbine with diameter and height of 322 m and 153 m and blade diameter of 41 m will provide the 1.6 kW power required to supplement 10% of the power requirement. However, it is impractical to design such a large turbine. A practical turbine in terms of size and cost is a turbine of diameter and height of 2.4 m and 1.2 m with a blade radius of 0.32 m which can produce 10 W of power and cost around A$ 767.30. An optimal system would be a hybrid system of solar PV panels and a couple of wind turbines where PV panels producing 90-100% of the power requirement. Wind turbines should be used to supplement the power demand during windy days.