Enhancing the Wind Energy Harvesting Capacity of a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) Using a Novel Wind Tracking System

In this research, a new active wind tracking system is developed and the developed system is integrated with a HAWT. The wind tracking system possesses simple structure consisting angular displacement sensor, wind flag, microcontroller and dc servo motor in which less frictional elements and yaw error are accomplished. Several experiments have been conducted with the proposed setup (HAWT with wind tracking system) and the measured data were compared with that of the conventional HAWT (no wind tracking system). It is appeared that a HAWT with the developed wind tracking system could be one of the cleanness approaches to meet the energy demand in worldwide. The results revealed that the proposed setup could extract almost double wind energy of the conventional system for the case of wind attack angle of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$75^{\circ}$</tex>. The maximum position adjustment time was measured 1.39 seconds by the developed system. Moreover, the developed system maintained almost constant power outputs and rotor speed for all angle of wind attack during the experiments. The experimental results and data of this research could be a potential of exploring the economic aspect of the proposed system in future.