Numerical investigation of vortex formation effect on horizontal axis wind turbine performance in low wind speed condition

Abstract

Wind energy is one of the renewable energy with no pollution and low-cost. Many countries especially those with high wind speed have been widely applying wind turbine in generating electricity and managed to reduce much cost of power generation. As the wind turbine relies on the wind, the use of large wind turbine in countries with low wind speed is impractical for the fact that wind is insufficient and not afford to rotate the wind turbine. Thus, small size wind turbines are more appropriate under low speed wind condition. However, small wind turbine suffers from high vortex downstream to the wind turbine that leads to high power losses. Reliable and practical wind turbine in countries whose wind speed is low is the idea behind the work done in this research. The effect of vortex formation on the performance of the downstream small wind turbine is investigated using numerical approach. A suitable modelling and simulation method are identified for the purpose of wake simulations behind a single wind turbine and the important data with respect to the effect of different spacing between wind turbines are also studied