Development of a 300W Generator for Lightweight Wind Turbine

Abstract

As a population of leisure activities grows and diversifies, there is a great demand for portable and environment- friendly power generation systems. A small wind power generation system is emerging as a suitable power generation equipment to meet these needs. The most important thing when developing a small portable wind turbine is to reduce the weight of the generator and increase the efficiency. The existing 300W wind turbine generator weighs about 10kg, which is heavy to carry. Therefore, a new generator weighing less than 4kg to make it easy to carry with high efficiency has been developed. In addition, considering complicated characteristics of wind volume and topography of Korea, a small wind turbine that can be used in urban and rural areas individually was constructed. Through basic designing and optimization, the lightweight and efficient generator was manufactured. It is a 300W wind turbine designed and fabricated with reduced weight as a prototype. The average output voltage of the generator was 24.7V at 900rpm no-load test. On a load test with the average line voltage 36.8V and the average phase current 2.62A, when the mechanical input was 339.84W, an average voltage output of the generator was measured as 289.5W with efficiency of 85.18%. The generator weight was 3.84kg.