The 5th Annual IEEE International Conference on

Cyber Technology in Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems

June 8-12, 2015, Shenyang, China

Experiment Validation of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Control System based on Wind Energy Utilization
Coefficient Characteristics
Chongyang Zhao1,2ˈ Jun Luo1ˈShaorong Xie1 ,Hengyu Li1
1
School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University
2
School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Henan Polytechnic University, Henan, China
Email: lihengyu@shu.edu.cn

Abstract—This paper, wind power generation system Betz' Law: Betz' Law is an important theory during the
experimental platform is established, and wind generator study of wind power output power control, which is a
external characteristics are measured. Vertical axis wind turbine fundamental theory in the efficiency of wind energy utilization
system features parameters are measured directly by the established by Betz in 1919 [2-4].
experimental platform, so output power, input wind energy, tip
speed ratio and wind energy utilization coefficient et al. Betz' Law assumed: blade wheel is ideal structure, which
parameters are calculated by the measured data, and draw the has many blades and no wheel hub; airflow can flow wind
appropriate output characteristic curve and analyze the wheel with no resistance, and the sweep face of the whole
experimental results. blade wheel is uniform, Air is always along the axis of the
blade wheel, and blade wheel is set in unit tube model, which
Keywords—Wind generator; Vertical axis Wind turbine; Clean is shown in figure1.
energy.
Assumed ν 1 is the wind speed before wind wheel, ν
I. INTRODUCTION
denotes the actual wind speed, ν 2 represents the wind speed
In recent years, with the serious environmental pollution
and the increasing exhaustion of non-renewable resources, after flowing, and the cross section area S1 and S2 of airflow
many countries have focused on the studies of clean energy[1- before and after wind wheel, respectively.
4]. Solar energy as an ideal energy has become the main target
in the development and utilization of renewable energy. The
vertical axis wind turbine work process is the process of
converting wind energy into electrical energy by wind turbine,
during this process, the efficiency of conversion by wind is not
100% because of many influence factors in it. So, how to
maximize the wind energy utilization efficiency of wind power
generation system is very significant.

II. CALCULATION OF WIND ENERGY

Air movement of energy can be defined as wind energy, Fig. 1 Wind wheel flow diagram
according to hydromechanics, the kinetic energy of air flow is Assumed air is incompressible, so
calculated as follow [1]
1 S1V1 = SV = S2V2 (3)
E = mv 2
2 (1) Axial force acting on the wind wheel can be express as
where m is the mass of the gas, v denotes the velocity of the F = ρ SV (V1 − V2 )
gas. (4)

Assumed the volume V of airflow which is the density ȡ Wind wheel absorbing power is
pass through the cross sectional area S in unit time, so the gas P = FV = ρ SV 2 (V1 − V2 )
volume V=Sv, while air quality m=ȡV= ȡSv, (5)
1 The variation of kinetic energy before and after wind wheel
E= ρ Sv3 is
2 (2)

978-1-4799-8730-6/15/$31.00 © 2015 IEEE 1640

 1 Rω 2 Rπ n
ΔT = ρ SV (V12 − V2 2 ) λ= =
2 (6) namely, V 60V , the relationship of Wind
turbines of wind energy utilization coefficient, tip speed ratio
According to energy equation and blade pitch angle can be expressed as
P = ΔT (7) − C5
§C ·
So CP ( λ , β ) = C1 ¨ 2 − C3 β − C4 ¸ e λi
+ C6 λ
© λi ¹ (13)
V1 + V2
V=
2 1 1 0.035
(8) = − 3
And power is
λi λ + 0.08β β + 1 (14)
1 In this paper, we set these parameters as
P= ρ S (V12 − V2 2 )(V1 + V2 )
4 (9) ­C1 = 0.5176
Due to wind speed V1 before wind wheel is constant, so °C = 116.0
power can be seen as the function of V2, the derivative of P is ° 2
°°C3 = 0.4
dP 1 ®
= ρ S (V12 − 2VV
1 2 − 3V2 )
2
°C4 = 5.0
dV2 4 (10) °C5 = 21.0
So V2=-V1 (Rounding) and we adopt V2=V1/3, the °
maximum P is °̄C6 = 0.0068
According to equation (13) and (14), the typical curve
8
P max = ρ SV13 which represents the relationship of C p and λ is obtained,
27 (11) which is shown in figure 2. [6] So given a certain wind turbine,
the maximum P is obtained ideally only in work without we can obtain a maximum wind energy utilization coefficient
the loss of wind wheel and convert to the mechanical power of C p max by adjusting the pitch angle and tip speed ratio. For
the wind wheel, so
different pitch angle β , There is a certain optimal tip speed
1 ratio Ȝ. Under this circumstance, wind-power utilization
P = ρ SC p v3 coefficient is maximum, and the wind turbine converting
2 (12) efficiency is highest [7]
In wind turbine theory, there are two very important
parameters: [5]

Wind-power utilization coefficient C p , which can be

defined as
Windturbine output mechanical power
Cp =
Wind turbine inputpower ,

The maximum is C p max =0.593 , and the value is maximum

efficiency in the ideal theory of the wind turbines, which is
called as Betz limit. In actually, the C p cannot exceed 0.539,
which is between 0.4 and 0.45 in practical application.

Tip speed ratio, which can be defined as

tip linear velocity
λ= Fig. 2 Diagram of the relationship of C p and λ
wind speed ,

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 According to above theory fundament, the vertical axis the electromagnetic limiting-velocity function of generator is
wind turbine control system test platform is established to test reliable
and analysis.

III. EXPERIMENTAL TEST PLATFORM

The vertical axis wind turbine control system test platform
is shown in figure 3,. The platform is consisted of wind
generator systems and blower platform.

Fig. 5 Speedometer
Experiment Two: Wind driven generator output
characteristics experiment
In this experimental platform, wind driven generator output
characteristics in different wind speed are measured. In no-
load, wind wheel of wind turbine is in freedom and state of the
(a) wind, and start the blower and increase wind speed gradually,
subsequently, wind turbine starting average wind speed is
1.5m/s which obtain through multiple measurements. With the
wind speed which is the range of wind speed from 3m/s to
10m/s and wind velocity interval is 1m/s, increasing, the
blower rotate speed, output voltage, output current et al.
parameters of wind driven generator are measured in different
wind speed, the measured results are shown in Table 1,
subsequently, wind energy utilization efficiency is calculated
by measured data.

(b) (c) V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Fig. 3 Vertical axis wind turbine control system (1) The output voltage and output current of the blower
(a) Experimental setup; (b) The vertical axis Wind turbine When the windward speed exceed the start-up wind speed,
rotor; (c) Blower the output voltage and output current of the blower are
measured in different wind speed, the change curves of output
Wind driven generator system connection diagram is voltage and output current vs different wind speed is shown in
shown in figure 4, the parameters of the generator output figure 6. In the initial stage, output voltage and output current
voltage, output current, output power and speed et al. can be is very small, but with the wind speed increasing, the output
measured by controller. voltage and output current rise correspondingly, the reason for
this is most wind energy which is obtained by blower is used to
Wind overcome system friction resistance et al. mechanical factors.
Controller Load
turbine

Fig. 4 Wind driven generator system connection diagram.

IV. GENERATOR SYSTEM EXPERIMENT

Experiment One: The electromagnetic limiting-velocity
function test.
During experiment, the tachymeter which is shown in
figure 5 is adopted to measure the wind wheel speed, when the
value exceed 480r/min, rotate speed increase slowly, and when
the value is about 385r/min, the rotate speed fluctuate, which
means that the wind wheel speed exceed a critical value, Fig. 6 The curves of output voltage and output current vs
Generator electromagnetic limiting-velocity began to work,
subsequently, wind wheel speed decreases. [8] Consequently, different wind speed

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 Table 1 experiment results
Wind Rotate tip Output Output Output Input wind wind energy
speed(m/s) speed(r/min) speed voltage(V) current(A) power (W) power(W) utilization coefficient
ratio
1.5 START 0 0 0 0 1.685 0
3 90 1.256 0.240 0.090 0.022 13.478 0.0016
4 125 1.308 1.532 0.103 0.158 31.949 0.0049
5 176 1.474 12.207 0.718 8.765 62.400 0.1405
6 235 1.640 14.392 1.476 21.243 107.827 0.1970
7 278 1.663 17.573 2.403 42.228 171.226 0.2466
8 326 1.706 19.011 2.932 55.740 255.590 0.2181
9 374 1.740 20.433 3.257 66.550 363.917 0.18.29
10 427 1.788 22.784 4.156 94.690 499.200 0.1897
11 473 1.800 24.570 4.755 116.830 664.435 0.1758

(2) Input blower wind energy and output power
In different wind speed, Input blower wind energy can be
1 power and input blower wind energy, and the coefficient
expressed by P= ρ Sv3 , where air density ȡ is
2 represents Wind power system energy conversion efficiency.
ρ =1.248kg / m3 , and wind wheel sweep area S is defined
with
S = D × H = 0.8 × 1.0 = 0.8m 2
(D is the rotation blade diameter of wind wheel, H is the blade
height of wind wheel) [9], and the output power of blower is
obtained by output voltage and output current, which is shown
in figure 7. According to figure 7, with the increasing of the
windward speed, input wind energy and the output power of
blower rise simultaneously, but output power is larger than the
wind energy.
(3) Wind energy utilization coefficient characteristics
Wind energy utilization coefficient is the ratio of output
The relationship between wind energy utilization coefficient
and wind speed, tip speed is shown in figure 8 and figure 9.
According to figure 8, Wind energy utilization coefficient
increase firstly, then decline with the growth of wind speed.
When the wind speed is 7m/s, wind energy utilization
coefficient is 0.25 which is maximum, that is to say, wind
energy utilization efficiency is highest. Correspondingly, in
figure 9, wind energy utilization coefficient increase firstly,
then decline with the growth of tip speed ratio. When the tip
speed ratio is 1.663, wind energy utilization coefficient is 0.25
which is maximum, that is to say, wind energy utilization
efficiency is highest. So the experimental results is shown that
wind energy utilization coefficient characteristics is in good
agreement with wind energy utilization coefficient
characteristic theory [10]

Fig. 7 the curves of blower input wind speed and output power

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 the experimental results, which can validate the reasonable
experiment platform, experimental method correctly, and wind
energy utilization coefficient characteristics is in good
agreement with wind energy utilization coefficient
characteristic theory.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This project is supported by the National Nature Science
Foundation of China (No.61375093), and the Natural Science
Foundation of Shanghai (No.13ZR1454200).

Fig. 8 The relationship of wind energy utilization coefficient

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