Evaluation of 10-kW WTG

This chapter evaluates the economic benefits to be gained by installing a micro-generation wind turbine for a customer with a three-phase electrical supply requirement on an agricultural premise. The wind turbine is a 10-kW three-phase synchronous type and is embedded with the national electricity supply. It is anticipated that the energy units supplied by the wind turbine offsets, and reduces, the number of energy units imported from the national grid. The evidence for the claims made in this paper is obtained by using actual empirical data collected from the installed equipment over three years. The objective is to accurately appraise the financial investment using real data downloaded from the renewable plant. There appear to be minimal studies conducted into this type of empirical research, possibly because the renewable energy sector is in the infancy stage in the host country, Ireland. There are some wind energy installations with financial appraisal techniques based on modelled data, which may, or may not, be accurate. The study concludes by claiming that the economic benefits of the wind energy turbine installation displayed disappointing results when compared to predicted benefits based on modelled data. A supercapacitor smoothing system is installed on the WTG power output signal. Constantly varying power output negates the turbine's effectiveness. Results show that while the supercapacitor system stabilized the voltage, the current has still short-term (half-second) variations associated with it. Therefore, as a consequence of the varying current, the power output signal has not stabilized.