Development of Computer Program for Wind Resource Assessment, Rotor Design and Rotor Performance

People understand and have seen that renewable energy has many advantages over conventional energy sources. Because of these advantages, more and more emphasis has been given to generating electrical energy with renewable sources. Among the many renewable and conventional ways currently available for a society to generate electrical power, wind turbines are one of the cheapest ways of doing this. The main objective of this thesis work is to develop a computer program that assesses the wind resource at a given location, designs a wind turbine rotor for optimum power capture for one wind speed, and analyzes the performance of this designed rotor over a range of wind speeds. A key output of this computer program is the energy that a wind turbine can produce over a one year period, at a given location. Many other results are produced by this newly developed computer program as well. This computer program allows for three different air foil types to be used on a single blade. Using more than one airfoil type along a single blade is necessary for good performance of larger diameter wind turbines. While the computer model developed for this thesis work is applicable to any location, any elevation, and any time period; results are produced for only one location and one hub height. The location studied is Eaton, Ohio and the hub height is 70 meters above the ground. Plots and single numbers that describe the Eaton wind resource are presented. A 20-meter radius wind turbine rotor is designed using three NREL S-series airfoils along the length of each blade of a three-bladed wind turbine rotor. For the root section of the blade a S818 airfoil is used, for the primary section of the blade a S816 airfoil is used, and for the tip section of the blade a S817 airfoil is used. A couple of design parameters are surveyed along with one operational parameter