Technological and Operational Aspects That Limit Small Wind Turbines Performance

José Luis Torres-Madroñero,César Nieto-Londoño,Julián Sierra-Pérez,Daniel Restrepo-Montoya,Joham Alvarez-Montoya,Jorge Mario Tamayo-Avendaño

doi:10.3390/en13226123

José Luis Torres-Madroñero, César Nieto-Londoño + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en13226123

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Journal: Energies	Publication Date: Nov 22, 2020
Citations: 9	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Pontifical Bolivarian University

Abstract

Small Wind Turbines (SWTs) are promissory for distributed generation using renewable energy sources; however, their deployment in a broad sense requires to address topics related to their cost-efficiency. This paper aims to survey recent developments about SWTs holistically, focusing on multidisciplinary aspects such as wind resource assessment, rotor aerodynamics, rotor manufacturing, control systems, and hybrid micro-grid integration. Wind resource produces inputs for the rotor’s aerodynamic design that, in turn, defines a blade shape that needs to be achieved by a manufacturing technique while ensuring structural integrity. A control system may account for the rotor’s aerodynamic performance interacting with an ever-varying wind resource. At the end, the concept of integration with other renewable source is justified, according to the inherent variability of wind generation. Several commercially available SWTs are compared to study how some of the previously mentioned aspects impact performance and Cost of Electricity (CoE). Understanding these topics in the whole view may permit to identify both tendencies and unexplored topics to continue expanding SWTs market.

Highlights

Energy demand augmented in 2018 above 2.3% according to the International Energy Agency, showing the fastest growth pace in the last decade [1,2]
Six different wind turbine models are considered, and their characteristics are shown in Table 7, including the manufacturer, model, rotor diameter D, swept area A, rated power Prated, rated wind speed urated, cut-in speed uin, cut-out speed uout, and control type
This review shows that the existing literature focuses on typical wind speed estimation, present wind velocity consideration in standard IEC, and in studies of the operation under turbulent environments

Summary

Introduction

Energy demand augmented in 2018 above 2.3% according to the International Energy Agency, showing the fastest growth pace in the last decade [1,2]. Depletion of fossil fuel sources and the associated effect of the non-rational use of this on the environment has raised the interest in searching alternatives accounting for the development, renovation, adaptation and even hybridization of different renewable [4,5,6,7] and non-renewable generation sources [8]. In this aim, the United Nations promotes the implementation of strategies conducting to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all [9]. It is worth to mention that hydropower facilities are important assets for the electric power sector and represent a key source of flexibility for electric grids with high penetrations of variable generation [10].

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