Climate effects in low speed wind turbine's concentrators

Abstract

Galician climate conditions show the right ambience for wind turbines power generation during the winter and spring season whereas in the summer, the low wind velocity and the moist air density reduce the possibility of energy conversion. To solve this problem, low wind speed wind turbines were assessed during the last few years. In recent papers, some authors like Shikha have proved the feasibility to employ a wind concentrator for low speed winds turbines but in those studies moist air properties were not deeply analyzed, especially its effects on the moist air density and the wind velocity. In this paper a wind turbine concentrator was designed, manufactured and tested under different moist air density conditions. Results showed a variation in the flow lines when the ambience moist air density is low, therefore the output velocity would be increased regarding other previous studies. This wind turbine concentrator showed ideal working conditions during Galician summertime.