POWER CURVE TEST OF SMALL WIND TURBINES GENERATORS

摘要

The demand of Small Wind Turbines Generators (SWTG) has been increasingsignificantly in the world. Nowadays, there are more than 50 manufacturers of SWTG whorepresent over than 125 different models. In general, they are small companies withlimitations to obtain the characteristic curve of their machines. Thus, a lot of SWTG areintroduced in the market without certification and respective power curve. The presentwork deals about a methodology that allows to obtain the power curve of SWTG. A system,including a data logger, was used and a new power transducer was projected with capacityof measuring the instantaneous power of the wind turbine for different wind speed. Thewind turbine was tested in laboratory with its respective blades stimulated by the flow ofair of an axial fan. The instantaneous power, wind speed, rotation of rotor, andtemperature of operation of the SWTG were monitored and measured. The preliminaryresults show that, with this proposed methodology, it is possible to obtain the curvecharacteristic of SWTG. In the wind turbine studied, the power curve obtained inlaboratory was lower than the power curve supplied by the manufacturer, but closer to theones found in the bibliographical references about power curve testing. In the continuity ofthe project, a field work will be accomplished and the same system will be tested, but, thistime, in natural wind conditions. In this stage of the work, the standard IEC614000-12 willbe used as reference, as well as tests and results found in other bibliographical references.