Condition Monitoring Studies on a New Ellipse Shape Profile of Modified Savonius Wind Turbine with Quarter Cylindrical Rotor House

Abstract

This paper aims to enhance the performance of four bladed modified Savonius wind turbine (SWT) for low wind speed. The new ellipse shape profile (NESP) Savonius rotor equipped with quarter cylindrical novel rotor house (NRH) as investigated in previous studies, was investigated using wind tunnel test. In the current study, the rotational speed of various rotor houses was monitored under high wind speeds ranging from 22 to 32.8 m/s. Then, the best configuration was proposed for the open low wind speed studies, with the rope brake tests set up for variation of TSR and torque measurement. The analytical proof was provided to measure the performance of wind turbine. It was found that the use of four NESP bladed with NRH increased the self-starting speed for all low wind speed tests; 3, 4, 5 and 6 m/s. The lower self-starting wind speed of 5 m/s has the maximum Power Coefficient, Cp=0.1, whereas the current SWT geometry of H/D=0.227 which was originally fixed according to past studies requires further improvement. The higher the rotor height, the higher the Cp of combination of 4 bladed NESP SWT and quarter cylindrical rotor house.