Modeling of small wind turbine characteristics

Small wind turbine driven generators with power rating less than 10 kW have emerged as an important segment for meeting the stand-alone electrical load demand at remote locations. The operating characteristics of the small wind turbines are very different from their megawatt class counterparts as their blades operate at much lower Reynolds number. To design a suitable control topology for a wind energy generation system based on such small turbines, it is essential to model the turbine parameters and analyze the operating characteristics. In this paper an algorithm for obtaining the parameters and the performance characteristics of a 3 kW wind turbine is presented. Performance characteristics of the wind turbine obtained analytically from this algorithm are validated against experimental characteristics reported earlier in literature.