Innovative system for wind turbine testing

An innovative system for testing small wind turbine models, is presented. The system is especially designed for Darrieus type turbines. The turbine is directly coupled to a direct current machine and a chopper, electronically controlled by means of a Pulse Width Modulator, is used to supply the circuit. The system is used for driving the turbine during the start-up procedure and for braking at various speeds during the performance test. In the paper the main characteristics of the electronic system are described and compared with a traditional system. The main goal of the electronic control is to increase the accuracy in the measurements of torque and speed for each steady state point of the turbine characteristic curve. Another useful advantage provided by the electronic control is related to the possibility of fine tuning the load in order to obtain a large number of steady state experimental points describing the characteristic curve of the turbine. Moreover the system is suitable for integration in an automatic data acquisition and control system. The experimental results, obtained in testing a small turbine in a wind tunnel by means of the electronic control system are presented and discussed at the end of the paper.