Wind Turbine design and fabrication to power street lights

Abstract

The objective of this work was to design and build a wind turbine which can be used to power small street lights. Considering the typical wind speeds in Abu Dhabi, UAE and ease of construction, the design of the wind turbine was chosen to be Sea Hawk design from vertical axis wind turbine category. A three phase AC generator was used for its availability over the DC motors within the region. A 12V battery was used for storage and a charge controller was used for controlling the charge flow into the battery and for controlling the turbine rotation when the battery is fully charged. The blades used in the turbine were made of foam board according to the NACA 0018 airfoil shape with a chord length of 15cm. The connecting shaft was made of stainless steel. Structural analysis and CFD analysis were performed along with other calculations. Testing was executed to calculate the voltage output from the turbine at different wind speeds. The maximum voltage the turbine produced at 6.4 m/s wind speed was 2.4Vand the rotational speed of the turbine was 60.3 rpm.