Practical design and performance evaluation of micro-wind turbine in Libya

The environmental problem of global warming along with the desire to achieve sustainable and relatively cheap source of energy have motivated many research in the area of renewable energy. Wind energy resource is considered as one of the most promising and rapidly growing compared to other renewable energy resources. In this paper, a practical design of a horizontal wind turbine is implemented. The turbine is mainly composed of turbine blades, a gear box, a DC generator, and electrical controller. These components are designed experimentally in the lab. The main advantages of this system is that it has relatively low cost, operate at low speed at about 2m/s, and it can be easily controlled. It is concluded that such a small-scale turbine may be used to provide the required energy to small DC loads such as communication towers especially in areas that encounter frequent power outage.