Application of Variable Blade Pitch Control on Improving the Performance of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

A three blades vertical axis wind turbine simulation is performed to study the unsteady aerodynamic characteristics with blade pitch control. Several fixed and variable blade pitch models under different tip speed ratio are adopted to improve performance of the wind turbine. Results show that an appropriate pitch control model can effectively decrease the range of negative torque regime to reduce the vibration of the wind turbine. Besides, the average torque coefficient as well as the energy capture efficiency can be also improved, especially for the lower tip speed ratio. The overall efficiency of the wind turbines in power generation will be enhanced. For the cases under the tip speed ratio between 1 and 3, the efficiency can be enhanced 243% and 486% for fixed and variable pitch control models respectively as comparing with non-pitch control cases.