Small scale wind energy harvesting with maximum power tracking

• Autor(a) principal: Azevedo, Joaquim
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Mendonça, Fábio
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/2571
• topic: Energy harvesting; Wind energy; Horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT); Vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT); Maximum power point tracking; Simulation; Experimental setup; .; Faculdade de Ciências Exatas e da Engenharia

It is well-known that energy harvesting from wind can be used to power remote monitoring systems. There are several studies that use wind energy in small-scale systems, mainly with wind turbine vertical axis. However, there are very few studies with actual implementations of small wind turbines. This paper compares the performance of horizontal and vertical axis wind turbines for energy harvesting on wireless sensor network applications. The problem with the use of wind energy is that most of the time the wind speed is very low, especially at urban areas. Therefore, this work includes a study on the wind speed distribution in an urban environment and proposes a controller to maximize the energy transfer to the storage systems. The generated power is evaluated by simulation and experimentally for different load and wind conditions. The results demonstrate the increase in efficiency of wind generators that use maximum power transfer tracking, even at low wind speeds.