Special Issue on “Micro Wind-Power Applications”

Abstract

The achievement of technologically efficient solutions for energy generation, distribution and usage represents a crucial need of modern society, both for environmental and economic reasons. An important role in tackling future energy challenges is played on one hand by the replacement of the electrical energy production from conventional fossil based (coal, natural gas, and oil) sources to renewable energy sources (among which wind power still plays a key role) and on the other hand by the usage of highly efficient and reliable power electronic converters to optimize production, distribution and final use systems. Furthermore, the process of energy market deregulation has nowadays opened new perspectives based on a distributed green energy generation. In the modern world energy landscape, wind power has indubitably become an economically attractive option for commercial electricity generation and can count installations in more than 70 countries all over the world. But if large wind farms have become a common sight in many locations worldwide and public attitudes towards the visual impact of wind turbines are changing, the penetration of small-scale wind generators has been characterized by a much slower development. Besides technical factors, their acceptance and integration in the urban landscape has not at all reached a full level of maturity. As observed by A. Ross [1], “satellite dishes on the sides of houses were once viewed as an eyesore. Now, they are so common we hardly notice them. Will micro wind turbines be viewed in the same way?”. It is worth nothing that in the common practice there is not a clear definition neither of what is classifiable as small scale wind energy, nor of the concept of micro wind turbine. As an example, RenewableUK (formerly named British Wind Energy Association – BWEA), the UK's leading renewable energy business organization, uses the term “micro wind” to describe a wind turbine whose size is under 1.5 kW (with a total height between 10 and 18 meters), the term “small wind” to refer to wind turbines whose size is between 1.5 and 15 kW (with a total height between 12 and 25 meters), and the term “small-medium wind” to refer to wind turbines whose size is between 15 and 100 kW (with a total height between 15 and 50 meters). The standards 61400 of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) define