Optimum Design of a Wind Power Tower to Augment Performance of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

Abstract

Wind power tower has been used to augment the performance of VAWT (Vertical Axis Wind Turbine). However, inappropriately designed wind power tower could reduce the performance of VAWT. Hence, an optimization study was conducted on a wind power tower. Six design variables were selected, such as the outer radius and the inner radius of the guide wall, the adoption of the splitter, the inner radius of the splitter, the number of the guide wall and the circumferential angle. For the objective function, the periodic averaged torque obtained at the VAWT was selected. In the optimization, Design of Experiment (DOE), Genetic Algorithm (GA), and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) have been applied in order to avoid a localized optimized result. The ANN has been continuously improved after finishing the optimization process at each generation. The performance of the VAWT was improved more than twice when it operated within the optimized wind power tower compared to that obtained at a standalone.