Journal Press India^®

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Majority of the regions in India are characterized by moderate and low wind regimes. These regions have variable and gusty winds. Our low-wind energy turbine addresses this problem and is capable of providing power to millions of people not connected to the grid in low wind conditions. Our objective is to design a suitable wind turbine applicable in low speed regions extracting maximum power output. Our team aims to take on the challenge of improving wind turbine efficiencies, at low to medium wind speeds, to reduce environmental impact and encourage adoption of wind energy at domestic and commercial building rooftops and small distributed systems. Blade Element Momentum theory was adopted to find the suitable parameters at the required wind speeds. Tools like Q-Blade and X-foil were used to optimize the CAD model of the blade. A customized Wind tunnel was fabricated by the team to validate the practical results against the theoretical ones. Rapid Prototyping technique of 3-D printing was used to manufacture the blades. Final results establish a close relationship between the theoretical and experimental values.

Keywords

Wind Turbines; Blade Velocity; NACA 2212

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