SMALL BATTERY CHARGING WIND TURBINE SYSTEMS

P.Fitches Marlec Engineering & J.B. Feuchtwang CREST Loughborough University of Technology.

Introduction
Marlec Engineering, founded by the late John Fawkes, has been manufacturing small battery charging wind
generators for a world-wide market since 198 1, applications for these being extremely diverse but all
demanding rugged, simple equipment that can demonstrate reliability in the worlds iiiost extreme conditions
from the Antarctic to the Saham desert, off-shore and on land. By the very nature ofthe application, most
installations are in very remote and inaccessible locations, making regular maintenance costly and sometimes
impracticai. in order to meet this criteria, designs have evolved using simple conventional electrical and
mechanical systems with a minimum of moving parts with inherent reliability. One key challenge is the
control of rotor speed and power, and the limiting of supporting stmcture loading in extreme wind conditions.

Current Power limiting methods

Small battery charging wind generators are inherently variable speed, rotor overspeed control is commonly
accomplished through some form of furling, which normally involves yawing or tilting the entire rotor so 35
to reduce the wind incidence on the rotor. The most common approach uses a sprung or weighted tail
arrangement with an offset rotor to yaw the complete turbine at a given n-indspeetl.
Actively controlled pitching mechanisms are uneconomical at this scale. but some systems employ, to good
effect, passive pitching mechanisms utilising centrifugal loads acting on "bobweights" or the blades
themselves, in some cases controlled via springs, to effect the pitch change.
Most of the current systems use moving part mechanisms which are a potential source of unreliability.

New Developments
Marlec are currently leading a consortium involving several IJK universities and being supported by the
Department of Trade and Industry, to develop a new small battery charging wind turbine employing. among
other novel aspects, passive pitch control for rotor overspeed and power limiting.
It is hoped to improve the reliability over more conventional designs by eliminating the complexity of
moving part mechanisms and bearings from the speed control system. leaving only the rotor itself and the.
yaw bearings as moving parts. Rigidly mounted self twisting blades will act in the role of a passive pitch$;
system to provide overspeed protection in the event of extreme winds and loss of load. Generator power
control will be handled by the electrical system.
The advantages of this approach are clear for both power regulation of variable speed turbines and for
overspeed protection in general. Such a machine would have less moving parts than both variable and fixed
pitch machines, the latter of which must have mechanisms for overspeed protection such as furling (small
machines) or tip brakes (large machines). By employing flexible blades. many ofthe more severe cyclic and
transient loads would be relieved thus improving the machines' fatigue life over fixed pitch machines, by
pitching into feather, thrust forces under extreme winds will be reduced allowing cost improvements relating
to tower and foundation design.

E 1996 The Institutionof Electrical EnQin0SfS. 6/1

Printed and published by the IEE. savoy Place, London WCZR OBL UK.
Authorized licensed use limited to: K J Somaiya College of Engineering. Downloaded on July 31,2010 at 08:44:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Electrical System
The generator is of relatively conventional format but employs some novel aspects tor a it's size and
application. It is brushless and utilises permanent magnets while being completely controllable via the siniplc
electronic control system.
Permanent magnets provide the required excitation at nominal output, while the control system can provide
buck and boost of this field as demanded by the operating conditions. Using power and speed feedback
signals the electronics will maintain optimum generator output throughout n o n a l operating windspeeds ant1
power limiting under extreme conditions.

Conclusions & Future work

On the basis of the computer modelling and validation undertaken so far. the self twisting blades should
prove to be an effective method of rotor speed control. A prototype machine soon to be constructed will he
wind tunnel and field tested to validate the theoretical work. It will be commercialised as a product in it's
own right and also used as a test bed for scaling up the theory to much larger machines.

References

Karaolis, N.M. 'Design of fibrereinforced composite blades for passive and active wnd turbine rotor
aerodynamic control' PhD Thesis, University of Reading Oct. 1989.

Feuchtwang J.B., Infield D.G., Schmeer A., Jeronimidis G. 'Development of self-twisting composite blades
for passive pitch control of a wind turbine' Proc. European Union Wind Energy Conf.. Cioteborg. Sweden.
1996

613
Authorized licensed use limited to: K J Somaiya College of Engineering. Downloaded on July 31,2010 at 08:44:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.