Performance Evaluation of Vertical Axis Wind Turbine on Highways

Abstract The consumption of electricity at highways is increasing over time, consequently, more fossil fuel is burned to generate more electrical energy. However, this expensive cost of burning fossil fuels can be saved by replacing them with renewable energy sources such as wind energy. Wind energy can be generated by using a wind turbine. Therefore, this study aims to develop a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) that can work effectively in highway wind speed conditions while evaluating its performance in terms of torque and power by using a simulation approach. The simulation involves the use of K-omega shear-stress transport (SST) as the turbulence viscosity model. The VAWT undergoes two types of tests during the simulation process. In Test 1, the wind turbine is tested with a various number of blades at constant wind speed to find which model has the best performance in terms of torque and power output. Then, the selected model with the better output proceeds to Test 2 where it is tested with different sizes of blade radius. The results have shown that a Savonius wind turbine with five blades produces more torque and power output compared to the other rotors with two, three and four blades reaching the maximum at 140 RPM. In terms of blade radius, the model with a 400 mm radius has a better performance and capable of producing higher torque and power output than the other blade sizes.