Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of the Study

Renewable energy of wind interest increases as alternative energy to fulfill the increasing of energy needs over the world. It is being important due to decrease of fossil fuel resources. Moreover, the fossil fuels cause environment pollution. CO 2 emission of the fossil fuels brings greenhouse effect and global warming. Utilization of wind energy is reliable to reduce the usage of fossil fuelsAlam, Ali et al. 2012. It means reducing environmental problems. Wind power is transformation of wind energy into electricity by using wind turbine. The wind energy is basically the kinetic energy of large masses of air moving over the surface of earth. The wind turbine receives the kinetic energy, then transforms it into electrical forms Mathew 2006. Vertical-axis wind turbines VAWTs have been tested to be effective devices to extract energy from the wind. VWATs have been used to generated mechanical and electrical energy at a range of scales, from small-scale applications through the large-scale electricity production Tong 2010. One of VAWTs is Savonius wind turbine. It has simple structure, relatively low operating speeds, and an ability to capture wind from any directions. However, it has low aerodynamic efficiency Akwa, Vielmo et al. 2012; Mahmoud, El-Haroun et al. 2012. There are many studies that conducted to determine the efficiency of Savonius wind turbine. These studies were carried out to understand the influence of various parameters and modification of Savonius wind turbine in attaining maximum performance of it such as the number of blades, the rotor aspect ratio, the profile change of the bucket cross section, the overlap and separation gap between blades, the existence of end plates and etc Altan, Atılgan et al. 2008. Wind direction device is one of some ways that examined to improve the Savonius wind turbine performance. In studies of the usage of wind direction device, scientists introduced various design of the wind direction device. On-coming Direction Guide Vane ODGV that surround a VAWT that is designed to improve the wind turbine performance conducted by Chong et alChong, Fazlizan et al. 2010. The performance of rotor is optimized by increasing the wind speed, guiding the wind flow onto the certain direction to improve the starting behavior of the turbine. Altan et al Altan, Atılgan et al. 2008 introduced some curtain arrangement dimensions without changing the basic structure of the wind turbine rotor to meet Savoniuswind turbine efficiency in their study. The result shows that commit to user 2 rotor performance increases with the increasing of sweeping area of the curtain arrangement. The sweeping area of curtain can be attained by the increase of curtain lengths and the angles. A new augmented shroud integrated with VAWT was introduced by Wong et al Wong, Chong et al. 2014 to improve performance of wind turbine system for urban area. This power augmented shroud can increase the performance of the VAWT significantly by increasing the wind speed. It increases self-starting behavior of VAWT andpower coefficient. The current study is to understand the influence of guide vane dimension designs to meet Savonius wind turbine efficiency. Guide vanes are arranged surround the two-blade Savonius wind turbine. Several dimension designs of guide vane will tested to determine the most appropriate one to improve the Savonius wind turbine performance.

1.2. Problem Statement