Hi-Tech Photovoltaic and Wind Energy Assets

Hi-Tech Photovoltaic and Wind Energy Assets

Author Name : Vineet Kumar Rai, Vimlesh Yadav, Tanzeel Shafi, Atif Ahmad, Awanish Singh

ABSTRACT

Wind energy is a renewable energy that harnesses energy generated by wind through the use of wind turbines that convert it into it into electricity. Vertical axis wind turbine power generation equipment can be located at ground level, which makes for easy maintenance. Also, VAWT are Omni -directional, meaning they do not need to be pointed in the direction of the wind to produce power. Our prototype of Small Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) study aims at fill this gap, developing turbines by taking advantage of the wind in regions where it has variable speed such as highways and country side road where the moving vehicles (Trucks,busses,cars ,Trains etc.) produce gusts of wind which can be used to rotate our prototype turbine and produce electricity. However, there are also downfalls to the VAWT. Firstly, boundary layer affects from the ground influence the air stream incident on the VAWT, which in some cases leads to inconsistent wind patterns. Secondly, VAWT are self-starting; currently, an outside power source is required to start turbine rotation until a certain rotational speed is reached .The main objective of our work is to design and build a self-starting vertical axis wind turbine. And to make it more efficient we added dual axis solar tracker at the top of our prototype which also contribute the power to charge the common battery attached to our prototype. The operating principle of the solar tracker is to keep the photovoltaic modules constantly aligned with the sunbeams, which maximizes the exposure of solar panel to the Sun’s radiation. As a result, more output power can be produced by the solar panel. The work of the project included hardware design and implementation, together with software programming for the microcontroller unit of the solar tracker.

Besides photovoltaic systems, nowadays Vertical Axis Wind Turbines, whose business is growing globally, are becoming particularly interesting because of the potential to produce energy and to be building integrated.