Design And Construction Of A 24V Wind Turbine

ABSTRACT

 The wind mill works on the principle of converting kinetic energy of the wind to mechanical energy using wind turbine. Wind turbines are made to rotate with the blowing wind and accordingly electricity been generated. This work is based on the production of 24vdc using wind turbine.

 CHAPTER ONE

1.1                                                        INTRODUCTION

As a result of over a millennium of windmill development and modern engineering, today’s wind turbines are manufactured in a wide range of vertical and horizontal axis types. The smallest turbines are used for applications such as battery charging for auxiliary power for boats or caravans or to power traffic warning signs. Slightly larger turbines can be used for making contributions to a domestic power supply while selling unused power back to the utility supplier via the electrical grid. Arrays of large turbines, known as wind farms, are becoming an increasingly important source of renewable energy and are used by many countries as part of a strategy to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

A wind turbine is a device that converts the wind’s kinetic energy into electrical power. The term appears to have been adopted from hydroelectric technology (rotary propeller). The technical description of a wind turbine is aerofoil-powered generator. Wind turbines are like airplanes running on the spot—spinning round but going nowhere. They’re serving a very useful purpose, however. There’s energy locked in wind and these giant propellers can capture some of it and turn it instantly into electricity.

A turbine is a machine that spins around in a moving fluid (liquid or gas) and catches some of the energy passing by. All sorts of machines use turbines, from jet engines to hydroelectric power plants and from diesel railroad locomotives to windmills. Even a child’s toy windmill is a simple form of turbine.

The huge rotor blades (propellers) on the front of a wind turbine are the “turbine” part. As wind passes by, the kinetic energy (energy of movement) it contains makes the blades spin around (usually quite slowly). The blades have a special curved shape so they capture as much energy from the wind as possible.

Although we talk about “wind turbines,” the turbine is only one of the three main parts inside these giant machines. The second part is a gearbox whose gears convert the slow speed of the spinning blades into higher-speed rotary motion—turning the drive shaft quickly enough to power the electricity generator.

 1.2                             OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT

The objective of this work is to design a wind turbine that will produce an output voltage of 24vdc.

1.3                                  SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

Wind turbine has similar principle with dynamo on a bicycle. When you ride a bicycle, the dynamo touching the back wheel spins around and generates enough electricity to make a lamp light up. The same thing happens in a wind turbine, only the “dynamo” generator is driven by the turbine’s rotor blades instead of by a bicycle wheel, and the “lamp” is a light in someone’s home dozens of miles away. In this work, generator is driven by the turbine’s rotor blades by wind. This generator will produce a 24v output.

1.4                                     SIGNIFICANCE OF WIND POWER

• It’s a clean fuel source. Wind turbine does not pollute the air like power plants that rely on combustion of fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas. Wind turbines do not produce atmospheric emissions that cause acid rain or greenhouse gases.
• It’s sustainable. Wind is actually a form of solar energy. Winds are caused by the heating of the atmosphere by the sun, the rotation of the Earth, and the Earth’s surface irregularities. For as long as the sun shines and the wind blows, the energy produced can be harnessed to send power across the grid.
• Wind power is cost-effective.It is one of the lowest-priced renewable energy technologies available today, costing between four and six cents per kilowatt-hour, depending upon the wind resource and the particular project’s financing.
• Wind turbines can be built on existing farms or ranches. This greatly benefits the economy in rural areas, where most of the best wind sites are found. Farmers and ranchers can continue to work the land because the wind turbines use only a fraction of the land. Wind power plant owners make rent payments to the farmer or rancher for the use of the land, providing landowners with additional income.

1.5                                       LIMITATION OF WIND POWER

• Good wind turbine sites are often located in remote locations, far from cities where the electricity is needed. Transmission lines is be built to bring the electricity of 24v
• Wind resource development might not be the most profitable use of the land. Land suitable for wind-turbine installation must compete with alternative uses for the land, which might be more highly valued than electricity generation.
• Turbines might cause noise and aesthetic pollution. Although wind power plants have relatively little impact on the environment compared to conventional power plants, concern exists over the noise produced by the turbine blades and visual impacts to the landscape.
• Turbine blades could damage local wildlife. Birds have been killed by flying into spinning turbine blades. Most of these problems have been resolved or greatly reduced through technological development or by properly siting wind plants.
• Energy produced by wind turbine requires expensive storage during peak production time.
• Wind energy can be harnessed only in those areas where wind is strong enough and weather is windy for most parts of the year.
  Usually places, where wind power set-up is situated, are away from the places where demand of electricity is there. Transmission from such places increases cost of electricity.
• The average efficiency of wind turbine is very less as compared to fossil fuel power plants. We might require many wind turbines to produce similar impact.
• Maintenance cost of wind turbines is high as they have mechanical parts which undergo wear and tear over the time.

1.6                             APPLICATION OF WIND-TURBINE

Wind-turbine generators have been built a wide range of power outputs from kilowatt or so to a few thousand kilowatts, machine of low power can generate sufficient electricity for space heating & cooling of names & for operating domestic appliances.

Pumping Application :- A typical wind powered pumping application is onethat might use a horizontal –axis wind used to pump irrigation water. Large number water pumping wind mills have been used in Indian forms other applications that are being developed include the pumping of water for aqueducts or for pumped-hydro storage of energy.

Direct Heat Application :- Mechanical motion derived from wind power can be used to drive heat pumps or to produce heat from the friction of solid materials, or by the chaining of water or other fluids or in other cases, by the use of centrifugal or other types of pumps in combination with restrictive orifices that produces heat from friction and turbulence when material having a high heat capacity such as water, stones, electric etc. or the heat may be used directly for such application as heating and cooling of water.

Electric Generation Applications: – Wind power can be used in centralized applications to drive synchronous a.c. electrical generator. In such applications, the energy is fed directly into power networks through voltage step-up transformers.

 1.7                                 TYPES OF WIND TURBINE

Wind turbines can rotate about either a horizontal or a vertical axis, the former being both older and more common. They can also include blades (transparent or not) or be bladeless. Modern wind turbines fall into two basic groups: the horizontal-axis and vertical axis wind turbine.

Horizontal axis

Components of a horizontal axis wind turbine (gearbox, rotor shaft and brake assembly) being lifted into position

Horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWT) have the main rotor shaft and electrical generator at the top of a tower, and must be pointed into the wind. Small turbines are pointed by a simple wind vane, while large turbines generally use a wind sensor coupled with a servo motor. Most have a gearbox, which turns the slow rotation of the blades into a quicker rotation that is more suitable to drive an electrical generator.

Vertical axis design

Vertical-axis wind turbines (or VAWTs) have the main rotor shaft arranged vertically. One advantage of this arrangement is that the turbine does not need to be pointed into the wind to be effective, which is an advantage on a site where the wind direction is highly variable. It is also an advantage when the turbine is integrated into a building because it is inherently less steerable. Also, the generator and gearbox can be placed near the ground, using a direct drive from the rotor assembly to the ground-based gearbox, improving accessibility for maintenance