Utilization of a low power wind turbine with the self-excited induction generator for heating in rural areas

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that Turkey has great amount of wind potential as energy prices unpredictably increase in the world today. This wind potential can be used to generate electricity through low and high power wind turbines. Several environmentally-conscious public and private companies have carried out few works to partially meet their needs of electrical power by means of wind turbines. Unlike the high power wind turbines, low power wind turbines are usually designed to partially meet energy demands for lighting and heating needs in rural areas isolated from power grids during the winter. It is widely accepted that electrically heating is independent of voltage and frequency and that makes the system under design simple and easy. Therefore the self-excited induction generator is highly appropriate machine to generate electricity despite its poor voltage-frequency regulation as well as many advantages over other types of generators. In this paper, the partially developed 5kW wind turbine is designed to heat up small houses in poor areas in Northwest Black Sea cost where wind potential is available during winter. The designed wind turbine which is isolated from the interconnected power grid starts to generate electricity at initial speed of 3ms-1 and the generated ac power is routed to feed electrical heaters. The results indicated that the developed system works well as long as the wind speed is over initial speed. However, if the wind speed is under the threshold speed the system is automatically connected to the national power grid. During the whole year, the produced electricity significantly contributes to the budget of a house in terms of energy saving.