International Journal of Advanced Renewable Energy Research
Volume:1 Issue: 1, 2012

The research work has been carried out to study the aerodynamic characteristic i.e., drag coefficient torque coefficient etc. of a vertical axis type six bladed Savonius rotor. At first drag and torque characteristics of the six bladed Savonius rotor are determined by measuring the pressure distribution over the convex and concave surfaces of each blade at different angle of rotation. The pressure measurements have been made at 13 tapping points on each two blades of the rotor. Pressure on the convex and concave surfaces have been measured for every 10˚ interval of rotor angle up to 360˚ angle of rotation. To calculate drag force and torque in non-dimensional form, computer based software has been used and the output has been subsequently plotted and analyzed. The effects of individual blade and also the combined effects of six blades on different aerodynamic characteristics are analyzed in this research work. A quasi-steady approach has been applied for the prediction of the dynamic performance of the rotor using the static drag and torque coefficients. Power coefficient versus tip speed ratio curve for six bladed Savonius rotor has been drawn. This method results in a reasonable agreement with the measured power coefficient.

In the study, the wind characteristics in the hilly or ridge areas of Bangladesh were made. The wind data have been collected from the SRE project/LGED, in collaboration with BUET, and it has been taken up a study entitled “Wind Energy Resource Mapping (WERM)”. There are three sites have been chosen for this work because of their completeness and reliability of wind data. The data have been collected by ten minute interval at 20 m height which have been sorted in the appropriate frequency like daily, monthly, annually mean wind speed. The wind duration curve has been drown and analyzed there. The value of Weibull shape factor “k” and Weibull Scale factor “c” have been determined and analyzed there. The site selection and best location for getting more wind speed in the hilly or ridge areas for installation of a drag type wind turbine which have been used for lifting water.

Solar radiation is the driving force for a number of solar energy applications such as photovoltaic system for electricity generations. Hence, the determination of solar radiation data through various approaches becomes imperative. In this paper, the Box Jenkins method is applied to global solar radiation data for some western cities of Nigeria. Seasonal autoregressive model of order 1 ARIMA (1,1,0) (1,2,0) and auto regression of order 2 ARIMA (2,1,0) (2,2,0) were tentatively used to model the ground and satellite solar data for Lagos respectively. Like wise ARIMA (0,0,3) (1,1,0) and (2,2,0) (2,1,0) for Ibadan ground & satellite data. ARIMA (2,1,0) (2,2,0) ARIMA (2,0,0) (2,1,0) for Akure ground & satellite data respectively. Ljung- Box statistic, Residual auto-correlation and partial residual autocorrelation plots were used in the diagnostic checking. Using the model it was shown that the model are quiet adequate

This paper presents a state-of-the-art on enhancement of different performance parameters of wind power farms such as voltage profile, damping of oscillations, loadability, reduce the active and reactive power losses, sub-synchronous resonance (SSR) problems, transient stability, and dynamic performance, by optimally placed of FACTS controllers such as TCSC,TCPAR, SVC, STATCOM, SSSC, GUPFC, UPFC, IPFC, HPFC in wind power farms. Also this paper presents the current status on enhancement of different performance parameters of power systems by optimally placed of FACTS controllers in wind power Systems. Authors strongly believe that this survey article will be very much useful to the researchers and scientific engineers for finding out the relevant references in the field of the enhancement of different performance parameters of power systems such as voltage profile, damping of oscillations, loadability, reduce the active and reactive power losses, sub-synchronous resonance (SSR) problems, transient stability, and dynamic performance, by optimally placed of FACTS controllers in wind power farms.

Current trend of energy production and utilization in Nigeria are at the lowest level despite the abundance of primary sources of energy in the country. Facts from current work on the crisis in Nigeria energy sector have shown that it is not about resources but management, strategic investment and utilization. Past and contemporary works on this subject have identified areas of shortcoming but fall short of giving proper platform to the solution. Silent belief common to those literatures is that risk capacity is high and cannot be afforded in Nigeria. Indeed investment volume is high, but affordability is a subject of debate. Disputing the affordability is because nearly 16 billion US dollars spent between 1999 and 2007 on energy sector have not given tangible result. Thus, this work will assess energy situation in Nigeria – security and challenges with a call to advocate for strategic investment in gasification of municipal solid waste.

The word itself “Solar” describes that we are dealing with some renewable energy source for a hot water system. A Solar Hot Water System(SHWS) has been already designed, further implementation has been done by working on its insulation at variable time, temperature and solar radiation so that there is a minimum temperature drop over night decreases. A suitable material is found for insulation which is feasible, cost effective and available. For this project an instrument named “Pyranometer” has been used to measure solar radiation flux density (in watts per meter square) and the experimental data collected from pyranometer will be used to find the optimum position of SHWS.

Determination of Daily global radiation is often required in the meteorological calculations. In this paper a model to determine daily global radiation from temperature and rainfall measurement are presented. The methodology adopted is to first identify the probabilities of clear skies and overcast skies, after which their sky transmittance are interpolated respectively in order to determine intermediate days i.e. days that are neither clear nor overcast. The model was tested for Lagos state south west Nigeria over a period of 5 years. The mean difference and percentage error were computed for both the measured and the estimated daily solar radiations. Our result shows that there appears to be no significance difference between the mean monthly and yearly estimated values and the mean monthly and yearly measured values.

New and distinct characteristics of wind properties of different locations were discovered during the analyses of wind data available from the Wind Energy Resource Mapping project for Bangladesh. Several researches have been carried out with these data and from their results, some irregularities (due to the country’s extreme features, such as: the longest land-sea interface, the highest population density, highly humid climate etc.) of earlier research could now be understandable. While searching for prospective windy sites of Bangladesh, it has been found that Sitakunda, a windy coastal location of the country have some notable wind speed characteristics. First of all, wind data of different coastal locations were analyzed to determine various statistical parameters like frequency distribution, duration distribution and cumulative distribution. During these analyses, an unusual wind characteristic at Sitakunda on September, 2006 was observed. This is in line with the occurrence of a severe windstorm in that locality during that time. Wind behavior was further studied by determining Weibull parameters. The value of Weibull shape factor (k) and Weibull scale factor (c) have been calculated by 3 different methods to investigate correlations to predict the occurrence of unusual gusts. It is observed that the occurrence of such unusual wind pattern could clearly be predicted in advanced by studying the trend of variations of Weibull distribution of these 3 methods.