Sustainable Wind Turbine
Channel: UNLVECE
Date: 29/12/2020

Environmental concerns have led to a significant increase in demand or renewable energy production. Wind turbine energy forms a sizable part of the renewable energy sector. The project is a scale model of the standard NREL reference wind turbine, which is a three-blade horizontal axis wind turbine. Current wind turbine blade is based on carbon fiver or fiberglass blade which creates carbon footprint during manufacturing and not recyclable. The solution is to construct the turbine blades with engineered wood composites, which has the benefit of being fully recyclable, having high fatigue resistance, and convenient damping behavior. The main objective of making the blades out of wood is increased sustainability, since wood construction will require less energy to construct (embodied energy). A control system will be designed for this turbine given its dimensions. The main goal of the turbine control system will be to modify the operating states of the turbine to keep the turbine in a state of safe operation, maximize power, mitigate damaging fatigue loads, and detect faults. On top of a control system, the turbine will also be able to store generated energy like any other turbine. Wind turbine fits perfectly in market to reduce carbon footprint and more environmentally friendly.

Video for Senior Design EE497 (project in development) Fall 2020