A Microtab based wind sensor

The rotor size of horizontal axis wind turbine has increased substantially and is getting bigger and bigger because of the cost-effective requirement. The bigger rotor size means the wind shear and turbulence would be more obvious. In such situations, only having the information of a hub height wind speed is not enough for the maximum power point tracking control and the load reduction control. The accurate information of wind speed is crucial in the large-scale wind turbine control and requires numerous wind sensors to be installed on the three wind turbine blades. The commonly used wind sensors such as pitot tube, hot-wire anemometer and sonic anemometer are usually expensive and thus not practically feasible by installing many wind sensors in a single wind turbine. Inspired by the microtab based smart blade (MBSB), a cost effective, microtab based wind sensor (MBWS) is proposed in this paper. We then discuss the design, structure and working principle of the new MBWS. Finally, using a finite element analysis, geometric features of the MBWS are determined. A novel method for the calculation of wind speed is given and its effectiveness is validated by three application cases, in which it is illustrated how wind speeds in multiple positions can be measured by installing more low-cost MBWS in three blades of a wind turbine.