Date of Award

8-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Discipline

Electrical Engineering

Abstract

In recent years, wind energy has been one of the fastest-growing renewable energy sources because it reduces the global economy’s dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation. Despite the tremendous growth in wind power generators, modern wind power generators are not effective at low wind speeds due to many shortcomings in their advanced design features, such as large blades, tall towers, and yaw control systems. It is desirable to design wind generators that operate at low wind speed environments for electric power generation.

This research work presents the design and fabrication of a wind energy harvesting system that captures and amplifies the natural wind at low speed for improved electrical power generation. The methods used in this work include: i) the application of the flow continuity equation to convert low wind speeds to higher speeds, ii) SolidWorks 3-D simulation of the wind generator system, and iii) prototypes built to obtain measurement results. The results from the three approaches were compared.

The designed system achieved a 91% area improvement by selecting a rectangular inlet and a circular outlet compared to using a square inlet and circular outlet that had an area improvement of 27%. SolidWorks was used to perform 3-D modeling and simulate the wind energy harvesting system. SolidWorks flow simulation results showed that wind velocities increased at the output of the wind generator system. The simulation results were close to those obtained using flow continuity equation. In addition, it was found through the 3-D simulation that the wind generators with diffusers had increased output wind speeds. Furthermore, the output wind speed slightly increased when the diffuser expansion angle was increased.

Small and large prototypes of the wind generator system were built. The prototypes operate omnidirectionally by rotating in the direction of the wind, while previously reported systems do not rotate in capturing low wind speeds. In addition, the large prototype system incorporates a controller for remote monitoring and data collection. The measurement results of the prototypes are close to those obtained from the 3-D simulations. The experimental results indicate that the wind energy harvesting system can capture and significantly boost low wind speeds for improved electrical power generation.

Keywords— Continuity equation, Electric power, Low wind speeds, Omnidirectional, Prototype, SolidWorks

Committee Chair/Advisor

John O. Attia

Committee Co-Chair:

Shuza Binzaid

Committee Member

Zial Haque

Committee Member

Cajetan Akujuobi

Committee Member

Penrose Cofie

Committee Member

Samir I. Abood

Publisher

Prairie View A&M College

Subjects

Continuity equation, Electric power, Low wind speeds, Omnidirectional, Prototype, SolidWorks

Rights

© 2021 Prairie View A & M University

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Date of Digitization

10/19/2023

Contributing Institution

John B Coleman Library

City of Publication

Prairie View

MIME Type

Application/PDF

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