Design and experimental verification of a high efficiency small wind energy portable turbine (SWEPT)

• A highly efficient small wind energy portable turbine (SWEPT) has been developed.
• It operates near the ground level where wind speed is below 5 m/s.
• It has very low cut-in wind speed of 3.0 m/s.
• Its power coefficient is 32% and overall efficiency of 21% at its rated wind speed of 4.0 m/s.
• SWEPT has rated power output of 1 W but power increases to 2.2 W at the wind speed of 5.5 m/s.

Large Scale Wind Turbines (LSWTs) have been extensively examined for decades but only few studies have been conducted on the small scale wind turbines (SSWTs) especially for low wind speed applications. This study provides the theoretical and experimental results on a 40 cm diameter small wind energy portable turbine (SWEPT) with rated wind speed of 4.0 m/s. The wind tunnel experiments revealed that SWEPT has rated power output of 1 W and is capable of producing power output up to 2.2 W at wind speed of 5.5 m/s. In comparison to the published literature, SWEPT is one of the most efficient wind turbines at the small scale (rotor diameter<50 cm) and very low wind speed (<5 m/s). SWEPT demonstrated a power coefficient of 32% and overall efficiency of 21% at its rated wind speed. We believe that the results reported in this study will be immediately applicable for developing power sources for the wireless sensor nodes used in structural health monitoring on bridges and highways and security systems in common household.