Fabrication and Performance Evaluation of Savonious Vertical Axis Wind Turbine for Uncertain Speed Regions

Abstract

The consumption of electricity in urban as well as rural is increasing every day and became an essential commodity for household and industrial purposes. Unfortunately the availability of electrical energy in India is not sufficient to the required demand and it is essential to discover and generate energy from non-conventional sources with cheap cost. On the same time it is necessary to reduce the consumption of conventional sources and to save fuel. Among all the renewable resources, wind is one of the best resources available all the time at free of cost. Especially vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) are self-starting, omni directional. They require no yaw mechanism to continuously orient towards the wind direction and provide a more reliable energy conversion technology, as compared to horizontal axis wind turbine. Particularly savonius vertical axis wind turbines (SVAWT) are suitable and practically possible at low or uncertain wind speed regimes. They can be fitted on rooftops and also suitable for the urban areas where electricity is not available properly. This project deals with the fabrication and performance evaluation of savonius vertical axis wind turbine using two blade rotor. The amount of power developed by the wind turbine is calculated under theoretical and practical conditions and aerodynamics coefficients are also estimated. And various design parameters of savonious rotor are identified and determined.