Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We are acknowledged our indebtedness and convey our sincere thanks

to our Project Guide Pallav Dutta, faculty of NARULA INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY, who sincerely helped us by giving inspiration , new ideas
and infrastructure throughout the semester. We would like to thanks
Electrical Engineering Department of Narula Institute Of Technology to
give us such platform for making this project successful. We also convey
our thanks to the faculty of our college and our group members who
helped entirely. At last, we again convey our special thanks to our
project guide, who had decided to present the model of the project at
the Electrical Engineering Department as our final year project.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

CONTENTS

1.Introduction to vertical axis wind turbines on highways

1.1 abstract
1.2 introduction
1.3 aim of project

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

Chapter:1

Introduction to Generation of electricity from

vertical axis wind turbines on highways

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

ABSTRACT

In countries where wind energy is less feasible, an energy harvesting

device such as highway wind turbines can still be used for supply of
energy of low power requirements.. This energy can be harvested using
vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) placed on the highways
to make use of the vehicles moving in both directions. The wind speed of
vehicles passing on a highway and wind power from the VAWT is
measured at a number of anemometer heights on the highways. Results
show that the VAWT prototype has produced up to 48-Watts of power
from vehicles moving on the highway, which produce an average wind
speed of 4.4 m/ s. The generator with gear mechanism is connected to
the shaft of the vertical axis wind turbine to generate electricity. The
electrical output of vertical axis turbine is stored in a battery for future
use and can also be supplied to grid.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

INTRODUCTION

It is evident that wind turbines can compete with other conventional

energy sources and is also available at much lower cost due to which it
as increasing demand in market. VAWTs can be utilized for a range of
applications, including (i) electricity generation; (ii) pumping water; (iii)
purifying and/or desalinating water by reverse osmosis; (iv) heating and
cooling using vapour compression heat pumps; (v) mixing and aerating
water bodies; and (vi) heating water by fluid turbulence. In general,
VAWT can sensibly be used in any area with sufficient wind, either as a
stand-alone system to supply individual households with electricity and
heat, or for the operation of freestanding technical installations .If a
network connection is available, the energy can be fed in, thereby
contributing to a reduction in electricity costs. The way in which lamp
posts are installed on the dividers in the highways in the same manner
VAWTs can also be placed so that it can utilize the moving wind on both
sides of the divider, caused by the speedy vehicles. These can also be set
up on both sides of any road or flyover where vehicles move with
sufficient high speed enough to generate electricity. But in this regard
we must consider the availability of space. Through the combination of
several VAWTs with other renewable energy sources and a backup
system, local electrical networks can be created for the energy supply.
In this modern time, there is resurgence of interests regarding VAWTs
as several universities and research institutions have carried out
extensive research activities and developed numerous designs based on
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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

several aerodynamic computational models. These models are crucial

for optimum design parameters and also for predicting the performance
before fabricating the models or prototypes.

AIM OF THE PROJECT

The objective of this project is to design and build a vertical axis wind
turbine for extraction of energy from moving wind, which are to be
installed on highways, where horizontal axis wind turbines cannot be
used due to unavailability of sufficient space required for safe spinning
of blades. This is one of the cleanest form of energy generation from
renewable source which reduces the exploitation of fossil fuels to some
extent.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

Chapter:2

Working principle of vertical axis wind turbine

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

WORKING PRINCIPLE
The vehicles on highway may be all types such as small or heavy
vehicles. Whenever a vehicle moves on both side of the highway divider
then some pressurized air is produced due to the speed of vehicle. This
pressurized air is strike on the blade of vertical axis wind turbine and
turbine makes a rotation with certain rpm. The shaft of the vertical axis
wind turbine is connected to generator. So as the turbine rotates the
generator is also rotate thus electricity is generated. The generated
electricity is DC. The generated electricity is stored in the battery for
use.

TYPES OF WIND TURBINE

The wind turbines are basically divided into two types-

 Horizontal axis wind turbine.

 Vertical axis wind turbine.

1)HORIZONTAL AXIS WIND TURBINE

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 Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

It is a turbine in which the axis of rotation of rotor is parallel to the

ground. They are further divided into two types-

1.1)Upwind turbine
1.2)Downwind turbine

1.1)Upwind Turbine

The turbine in which the rotor faces the wind first are called upwind
turbine.

 Today most of the HAWT is manufactured with this design.

 This turbine must be inflexible and placed at some distance from the
tower.

 The basic advantage of this turbine is that, it is capable of avoiding

wind shade behind the tower.

 It requires yaw mechanism, so that its rotor always faces the wind.

1.2)Downwind Turbine

The turbine in which the rotor is present at the downside of the tower is
called downwind turbine. In these types of wind turbines, the wind first
faces the tower and after that it faces the rotor blades.

 Yaw mechanism is absent in this turbine. The rotors and nacelles are
designed in such a way that the nacelle allows the wind to flow in a
controlled manner.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

 It receives some fluctuation in wind power because here the rotor

passes through the wind shade of the tower. In other words the rotor
is present after nacelle of the tower and this create fluctuation in the
wind power.

Fig: horizontal axis wind turbine

2)VERTICAL AXIS WIND TURBINE

It is a turbine in which the axis of rotation of the rotor is perpendicular

to the ground and also perpendicular to the wind direction.

 It can operates in low wind situation.

 It is easier to build and transport.

 These types of Wind turbines are mounted close to the ground

and are capable of handling turbulence in far better way as
compared with the HAWT.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

 Because of its less efficiency, it is used only for the private

purpose.

VAWTs are further classified as-

2.1)Darrieus turbine

2.2)Giromill turbine

2.3)Savonius turbine

2.1) Darrieus Turbine

 Darrieus turbine is type of HAWT. It was first discovered and

patented in 1931 by French aeronautical engineer, Georges Jean
Marie Darrieus. It is also known as egg beater turbine because of
its egg beater shaped rotor blades.
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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

 It consists of vertically oriented blades which are mounted on a

vertical rotor. It is not a self-starting turbine and hence a small
powered motor is required to start its rotation.

 First the Darrieus turbine is rotated by using a small powered

motor. Once it attains sufficient speed, the wind flowing across its
blades generates lift forces and this lift forces provides the
necessary torque for the rotation. As the rotor rotates, it also
rotates the generator and electricity is produced.

2.2) Giromill Turbine

 It is similar to the Darrieus turbine but the difference is that, it has

H-shaped rotor. It works on the same principle of Darrieus turbine.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

 This turbine has H- shaped rotor. Here Darrieus design which has
egg beater shaped rotor blades are replaced by straight vertical
blades attached with central tower with horizontal supports. It
may consists of 2-3 rotor blades.

 Giromill turbine is cheap and easy to build as compared with

Darrieus turbine. It is less efficient turbine and requires strong
wind to start. Same as darrieus types of wind turbines, it is also
not self- starting and requires small powered motor to start. It is
capable of working in turbulent wind conditions.

2.3) Savonius Turbine

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

 Savonius turbine is HAWT.It was first discovered in 1922 by a

Finnish Engineer Sigurd Johannes Savonius. It is one of the
simplest turbine among all known turbines.

 It is a drag-type device and consists of two or three scoops. If we

look it from above than it looks ‘S’ shape in cross section. The
scoops of these turbines have curvature shape and because of
that, it experiences less drag when it moves against the wind
instead of moving with the wind.

 Since it is a drag-type machine, it is capable of extracting very less

amount of wind power as compared with other similar sized lift-
type turbines.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

WIND VELOCITY IN DIFFERENT ZONE:

The wind speed data was taken and been analyze at the certain
highways in West Bengal such as at Dunlop(B.T. Road), G.T road,
Jessore Road etc. The data was takenfrom jan to feb 2019.

1. Highest mean wind speeds were 4.76 m/s at Dunlop and 3.39 m/s
at Barasat respectively.

2. The highest most probable wind speed and wind speed carrying
maximum energy were estimated 2.44 m/s at Dunlop and 6.02m/s
at Barasat.

3. The maximum deviation, at wind speed more than 2 m/s.

At very low wind speeds the turbine produces too little torque to
overcome friction.
Once the wind speed is sufficient to allow the turbine to rotate,
the output power is approximately proportional to the cube of the
wind speed. This remains true up to the rated speed. Above this
speed the power production levels off, and with stall regulated
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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

turbines actually drops as wind speeds are increased. Finally at an

even higher wind speed, the furling speed, the turbine is shut
down to avoid damage to the machine.

During this time,The total wind speed can reach until 12m/s.

Chapter-3

Components required

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

COMPONENTS USED

 9 volt brushless DC motor

 pvc pipes for blades
 stick or refil to make axis of turbine
 9v battery for emergency purpose

CIRCUIT DIAGRAM

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

SELECTION OF MOTORS
In case of power generation from turbines motors basically functions as
generators, as they convert mechanical energy of the moving wind into
electrical energy.
For the conversion of rotational mechanical power generated by the
rotor blades into useful electrical power, any of the following motors
can be used, depending upon the requirement:
 DC motor
 Induction motor
 Synchronous motor
Synchronous motors and induction motors are commonly used in large
wind turbine generators, while low speed DC motors are used for small
scale applications.

Fig: induction motor

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

In our project we have used brushless DC motors. It has the following

advantages:

 Permanent magnet motor is same as that of DC shunt motors with

the difference that there is permanent magnet instead of stationary
field winding for producing the required magnetic flux.
 Since this is brushless and commutator is absent it practically does
not require any maintenance.
 The life of this type of motors is longer compared to others.

Fig: Brushless dc motor(BLDC)

BLADE DESIGN:

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

Design of blades is the most important part to conduct the wind turbine
system. Thus; blades also must have special design to capture the
maximum wind. Blade design for the small horizontal axis wind turbine
is not difficult because there have various designs announce on the
internet. But then, for the vertical axis wind turbine is really a difficult to
design because there have no common model blades design yet.

Here we use drag forces on concave and convex surface of PVC pipe. It
uses force of the wind which pushes against the surface like an open
sail. It works because the drag of the open, or concave, face of the
cylinder is greater than the drag on the closed or convex section.

NUMBER OF BLADES USED:

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

For large marketable machines, the upwind, three blade is the industry
accepted the configurations. The three bladed also have advantages
over by using the two bladed configurations. Number of blades depends
upon the tower clearance, aerodynamic efficiency tower shadow
impulsive noise.

MATERIAL FOR THE WIND TURBINE BLADES:

Wind turbine blades have many types to manufacture. Besides that,
windturbine blades can be improve from better designs, material, manu
facturing, analysis, and testing. The material of blades must be low
weight and rotating inertia to increase the energy capture. The blades
must also high rigidity because this is important case for stability wind
turbine blades.

DIFFERENCE MATERIAL USED FOR WIND TURBINE BLADES:

1: Fibre glass Blades: Fibre glass Blades is the popular wind turbine
blades material for both large and small wind turbines. Fibre
glass materials are ideal for producing
wind turbine blades because of their strength, light weight.

2. Wooden blades: Woods blades usually used in simple wind turbine and
small wind turbine. Wood is another common material for small and
homemade. While itis a readily available, If it is not correctly treated,

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

wood is extremely at risk to weather, warping with moisture or

becomingbrittle in the sun.

3. Polyvinyl Chloride blades (PVC): In this project we used PVC because

1. It have lightweight characteristic.

2. Comparatively inexpensive.

It has disadvantage too,

1. PVC constantly weakens until it becomes very brittle .

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

Before buying the blade material we should aware of these things:

1. Engineering properties of the materials: Young’s modulus, Poisson’s
ratio, failure strains.

2. Materials used in the construction of shear webs and dimensions and

positions relative to the air foil geometries.

3. Materials lay-up and orientation of the layers.

CONSTRUCTION

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

POWER CALCULATION FORMULA:

The wind mill works on principle of converting kinetic energy of the wind
in to mechanical energy. The k.E. of any particle is equal to the one half
of its mass times the square of its velocity, or ½ mv2.
K.E. =½ mv2. ………………….. (1)
K.E = kinetic energy
m = mass
v = velocity,
M is equal to Volume multiplied by its density ρ of air,
Mass = ρ AV …………………. (2)
Substituting eqn (2) in eqn (1) We had got, K E = ½ ρ AV3 watts
ρ = density of air (1.225 kg/m3)
A = l*b (Sq.m)
D = diameter of the blade
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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

A = l*b
Available wind power Pa = (½ ρ π D2 V3)/4
Pa = 1/8 ρ π D2 V3
For a particular blade design A and D are fixed and calculation is made
for different wind velocities.

PERFORMANCE TESTING

In wind tunnel testing ideal flow conditions are maintained therefore

optimum performance can be evaluated.The specific objectives of wind
tunnel testing were: experimental determination of the nominal power
curves and determination of the structural integrity, safety, and
operation characteristics of the system. The power curves show the
relation between the rotary speed of the wind turbine and the produced
power, for a range of wind speeds. The tests were sequenced to start at
the lowest wind speed and RPM,
and continued till safety limits were crossed.

Power curve measurements :

During tests, the turbine speed was maintained within ±2.5 RPM of the
set point. Torque was calculated based on average rotary speed and
finally output power was determined from the torque.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

Fig: Power curves for nominal wind speeds

The experiment is performed at different wind speeds and from the

graph it is relevant that power generation increases with increase in
rotary speed.
Wind turbine performance is often characterized by power coefficient
Cp, given by:

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

where P is the power produced by the turbine and A is the area swept
by the turbine rotor. This co-efficient depends upon tip speed ratio
which is given by : speed of blade / speed of wind. As experiment was
performed at different wind speeds, tip speed ratio has also changed
accordingly. In the graph we have plotted the change of CP according to
the change of tip speed ratio.
There is a slight discrepancy at uwind= 6 m/s. The graph is plotted for
all wind speeds between 8 and 16 m/s.The maximum power coefficient
occurs at a tip speed ratio of approximately 1.6.The range of tip speed
ratios for power production was determined to be 0.8<λ<2.2 for all
cases, which is lower than the range for most other small VAWT.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

Fig: Plot of power co-efficient vs. Tip-speed ratio

PROJECT PICTURE

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

FUTURE SCOPE

For enhancing the performance efficiency of VAWT, CYCLOIDAL BLADE

SYSTEM can be introduced. Unlike the conventional approach of fixed
pitch here aerodynamic analysis is carried out by changing pitch angle
and phase angle based on the cycloidal motion according to the change
of wind speed and wind direction. For more efficient wind turine
,individual pitch angle control of each blade can also be studied. By

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

maximizing the tangential force in each rotating blade at the specific

rotating position , optimal pitch angle variation is obtained. Pitch angle
θ is the angle between the tangent line and the camber line of blade.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

To realize this overall concept, the mechanism that actively controls

pitch angle and phase angle according to the change of wind direction
and speed is needed. We primarily require a control mechanism that
consists of sensing part, control part and actuating part.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

The wind indicator and anemometer will send their sensing information
in analog voltage and pulse type. The microcontroller will calculate
appropriate pitch angle and phase angle from the sensed data and
makes PWM signal. This PWM signal will be given to the motor . The
motor along with the pitch control and phase control device will change
the pitch angle accordingly .

It is estimated that the force of CWT is larger than that of fixed pitch
system, and the performance will be improved at all wind speeds.
In addition to the cycloidal blade system if individual blade control
mechanism can be assembled, it will be possible to make maximum
tangential force by all blades, which would again increase the efficiency.

The development of effective alternators and dynamos can also harness

wind energy from relatively small winds. Besides the use of acrylic
plastic sheets can be used to develop low cost VAWT. Structural
fabrication should be more accurate in order to have proper function of
windmill .These turbines can also be fixed near high speed railway
tracks in order to get more energy output.

CONCLUSION
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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

The VAWT is designed and fabricated in such a way that the it can
capture wind from all the direction and it also responses rapidly with
change in wind direction. Besides, its operation is also silent and it is
much lighter in weight. The vertical axis wind turbine system is
physically more compact and integrated making it appropriate for
highway applications. Though it has lesser efficiency than HAWT it can
be increased by modifying the size and shape of the blade . The
reliability issues for horizontal wind turbines have been addressed
through decades of constant research. A similar level of research has
not occurred for vertical wind turbines. That situation is changing as
academic researchers are increasingly studying vertical axis wind
turbines. For examples, the number of annual journal citation to vertical
axis wind turbines has increased from 14 in 2006 to 1600 in 2006; the
number of published articles has increased by a similar factor. The
usefulness of completely independent wind power systems will depend
on the storage system designed, ease of maintenance,safety and cost
effective extraction of energy. On the whole it is a growing field to be
explored further for the improvement of modern scenario of wind power
generation using vertical axis wind turbine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

1. www.alternative-energy-tutorials

2. https://www.researchgate.net

3. https://www.slideshare.net>iviral1992

4. http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org

5. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

And special thanks to our Mr. Pallav Dutta sir for supporting us
to complete our project.

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Vertical axis wind turbines on highways

Thank you

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