Design and Performance Analysis of Micro Wind Turbine for Fiji

Today’s major research area is based on finding alternatives to fossil fuels. Wind energy can contribute significantly towards renewable energy production. A functional wind turbine built locally proposes a huge impact for Fiji and the Pacific Islands renewable energy industry. The design has to take into consideration the wind speed of the pacific which is quite different from other countries. A low Reynolds number airfoil was selected and modified for horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) and its aerodynamic characteristic was studied. The analysis were done using XFoil software, the numerical results were validated with experimental results before analysis were done. The Q-blade Software is used to design the blade for the wind turbine. The cut in velocity of wind turbine is 3 ms-1 , which is a big achievement when it comes for the power generation. The rated power is 50 watts at rated velocity of 6.5 ms-1 and the cut of velocity is at 20 ms-1 . The numerical results were validated with experimental results. The peak power after measurement was 23.73 watts at wind speed of 8 ms-1.