The Development of Small-scale Wind Trubine for Voltage Generation

Abstract

The continuous use of fossil fuel and the effects on humans and animals demands for sustainable renewable energy alternatives. Wind energy offers a promising solution as it is available everywhere, inexhaustible, and can be accessed anytime for the continuous generation of electricity to power homes and electrical devices. A small-scale horizontal axis wind turbine (HWT) was developed to assess its voltage generation potential. The turbine was installed at the Center for Renewable Energy Technology of the Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria. Mounted at a height of 5 m and fitted with a DC dynamo rated at 12 V at 4350 rpm, operating directly without any mechanical multiplier system. To collect real-time wind data automatically, an Arduino based datalogger is fitted and adjusted within a half hour resolution for the three months under investigation. The three months of December, 2023, January and February, 2024 under investigation showed that the month of December recorded the lowest voltage (3.9 V) at 13.00 hrs of the day while the highest voltage (4.5 V) was recorded at 18.00 hrs of the day.  The month of January has a voltage of 4.14 V at 13.00 hrs and 4.95 V at 6.00 hrs of the day. For the month of February, a voltage of 4.12 V was recorded at 12.00 hrs, while a maximum voltage of 4.95 V was observed at 6.00 hrs of the day.  A consistent voltage value of between 4.5 V and 4.95 V were recorded in the month of January. Similar downward trends of between 4.8 and 4.5 V were recorded in the month of February. For the three months of experimentation, a maximum voltage value of 4.95 V was obtained with no load connected at wind gust speed of 4.8 m/s at 188 degrees South West (SW) on the cardinal points. The result of this investigation revealed that the low wind speed in the study area resulted in the low voltage generated. This low voltage can be increased by incorporating a buck boost converter and a mechanical multiplier before storage in the battery.