Design and analysis of small wind turbine parameter and output characteristics

Small wind turbines have emerged as a pivotal source for powering stand-alone and offgrid loads. The power rating of such turbines is less than 10 kW. Such turbines operate at a very low value of reynolds number for which the mechanical output characteristics are very much different from that of its MW class counterpart. As a result, it is essential to design the parameters of the turbine. Further, it is imperative to model the small wind turbine behaviour in order to design a suitable control topology for interfacing the Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS) with the load. In this paper, an algorithm is presented to obtain the parameters and mechanical performance of a 3 kW wind turbine. The analytically obtained characteristic is validated against experimental characteristics reported in literature.