Shape Design and Aerodynamic Characteristics of Wind Turbine Blades Based on Energy Cost

According to the energy yield of wind turbines, a new design method for optimizing wind turbine blades based on the aerodynamics is presented. The design object is the minimum cost of energy which is calculated from the Annual Energy Production (AEP) and the cost of the rotor. The design variables used in the current study are the chord and twist angle. The blade shape parameters and the loads of the blades are considered as the constraints. With the model in this paper, one 2 MW wind turbine rotor is designed. The aerodynamic characteristics of the designed rotor are simulated and plotted. To prove the reliability of the results, the comparison between the designed 2 MW rotor and one existing widely used 2 MW rotor is completed. The rated wind speed is reduced from the 15m/s to 12.8 m/s that displays the designed rotor has high power at the low wind speed. The maximum power coefficient is increased from 0.463 to 0.49 that can effectively improve the annual power generation.