Designing and Developing of Savonius Wind Turbine for Efficiency Improvement in Low-Speed Wind Sources

 Abstract —Wind energy is one of the highest efficiency in renewable energy. Unfortunately, wind energy was not developed much in Thailand because the average wind speed of the city area is limited to the medium-low range which makes wind energy unsuitable for power generation. Recently, there are the researches tried to apply the wind turbine to wind source besides the bus. According to a large amount of vehicles transport from upcountry into the city 5n Thailand, wind energy can be considered as the potential energy only if the turbine can operate the high efficiency. With this reason, the object of this project focuses on the efficiency factors of a wind turbine to be able to use in low-speed wind energy especially wind that source by the passenger car includes designing and developing wind turbine for propeller’s efficiency increasing. This project used 200-Watt Savonius wind turbine to experiment with the effect of 1) weight of propeller, 2) material of propeller, and 3) swept area of the propeller to the efficiency of the wind turbine. The research and experiment yield the results that all factors are affecting to RPM, electric power and efficiency of Savonius wind turbine. This project can increase the efficiency of small wind turbine about 26% for use in low-speed wind sources.