Design and Implementation of a 10 kW Wind Power and Instrumentation System

Students and faculty at University of Northern Iowa established a 1.5kW grid connected windsolar hybrid power station on campus in 2002. This older system has been used for teaching and research purposes besides the small amount of the green power generation on campus. There has been an increase on number of students and interest to renewable energy systems and related projects. This increase brought a demand to increase capacity and size of the solar-wind energy system and laboratory activities on renewable energy technology. In addition, the university administration has been supporting renewable energy projects on campus since initial system has been established. The capacity of existing solar-wind hybrid power system was increased and improved to 10kW system by the technology (electrical engineering technology, and manufacturing technology) students and faculty. This work was supported by the State of Iowa and University administration as part of renewable energy promotion in the state and university community. This system was built mainly by the engineering technology students either as part of their class projects and voluntarily. In addition to amount of renewable energy generated, the system is also used as an educational and research demonstration module on smart grid, STEM education, and energy efficiency issues. Community members and students are scheduled to be invited to demonstrate the system. Especially local farmers showed interest to learn and established similar systems on their properties. A group of students are helping local community to do property audits to establish appropriate systems and give an idea to neighbors. Also a real-time data is available online of the system for the research and teaching purposes. It is goal of this project to save an estimated annual total of energy around 8 MWh. This estimated saving is calculated according to the local utility company rate charges. The outcomes of the project are a) power and economy b) environmental c) educational and community outreach, and d) research.