The Impact of the Pitch Angle on the Power of the AEOLOS V300

and AEOLOS V600 Wind Turbines

Zitouni Zineb, Mounir Hamid, El Marjani Abdellatif and Rabie El Alaoui

EMISys Research Team, Engineering 3S Research Center, Mohammadia School of

Engineers,University Mohammed V in Rabat, Rabat, Morocco

Keywords: VAWT, MATLAB, Variable Pitch Angle, Power Output, Wind speed, AEOLOS-V300W,

AEOLOS- V600W

Abstract: Nowadays wind power has become a promising source for electricity generation because wind power is

clean and efficient. The aim of this paper is to study the effect of the variable pitch angle on the

performance of the vertical axis wind turbines. The study concerns two type Darrieus wind turbines;

AEOLOS-V 300W and AEOLOS-V600 W. The results show that the pitch angle has a significant effect on

the output power. The turbines with a variable pitch angle can produce a maximum output power in low

wind speed compared to classic turbines, with an increase of 30% on the power coefficient.

1 INTRODUCTION

Wind energy is very essential as one of the

cleanest energy sources, it can help to reduce the

need for fossil fuels, and the wind turbines are the

most efficient tools to explore this clean energy (S.

Brusca, 2015) (Taher, 2015) (M. Predescu, 2009)

(Arti Tirkey, 2014) (M. Zheng, 2015). Several

configurations were developed in the latest years and

two types of the VAWTs namely Darrieus and

Savonius has been noticed (W. Roynarin, 2004). The

vertical axis wind turbines type Darrieus have grown

interest to produce electricity, even in urban areas.

This type of turbines presents several advantages

over the horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) such

as; a low noise, omnidirectional, able to catch the

wind from all directions, uses less material, can be

mounted at ground level, running with low wind

speed. Despite the low performance of these

turbines, they are more suitable for urban areas (M.

Ghasemian, 2017).

Many researchers have proposed different

optimization techniques to improve the performance

of vertical axis wind turbines, such as the effect of

the pitch angle control. Figure 1 shows several

variations of the pitch angle. M. Elkhoury et al (M.

Elkhoury, 2015) carried out the effect of variable

pitch angle on the performance of the micro vertical

axis wind turbine, the results have shown that the

power coefficient increases significantly with the

variable-pitch mechanism below TSR=1.5. A.

Rezaeiha et al (A. Rezaeiha, 2017), found that a

small negative pitch angle

β=-2° increases the power

coefficient by 6.6% compared with β=0° . G.

Abdalrahman et al (Abdalrahman, 2017) found that

the wind energy produced by H-type VAWT with

the variable pitch control increases by 25%

compared to the fixed pitch VAWT cases. M. El-

Samanoudy et al (M. El-Samanoudy, 2010)

concluded that for a pitch angle equal to 10°, the

maximum values of Cp ,Ct and



have been

obtained.

Figure 1: Geometric model of the pitch angle (A.

Rezaeiha, 2017)

Zineb, Z., Hamid, M., Abdellatif, E. and El Alaoui, R.

The Impact of the Pitch Angle on the Power of the AEOLOS V300 and AEOLOS V600 Wind Turbines.

DOI: 10.5220/0009773002490253

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference of Computer Science and Renewable Energies (ICCSRE 2018), pages 249-253

ISBN: 978-989-758-431-2

249

Q. Li et al (Q. Li, 2016), found that the Performance

of the test wind turbine depends of the blade pitch

angles and for a blade pitch angle of 6°, the power

coefficient takes a maximum value. Young-Tae Lee

et al (Young-Tae Lee, 2015), investigated the effect

of the pitch angle on 500 W Darrieus-type vertical-

axis wind turbine, and found that when the pitch

angle reaches -2° with a helical angle of 0, the

Darrieus-type VAWT showed maximum power.

In this work we aim to study the effect of the variable

pitch angle on the performance of the vertical axis

wind turbines in term to output power and the

maximal wind speed, furthermore two types of

turbines AEOLOS-V300W and AEOLOS-V-600 W

have been examined.

2 METHODOLOGY

2.1 Description of the Studied Turbines

AEOLOS-V blades use the aerodynamic design

which limits the maximum rotating speed to 360

rpm even if the wind speed is 30m/s or 40m/s. It is

safer and more reliable than traditional vertical axis

wind turbines. It could start up with 1.5m/s and has

the power output in 2.5m/s to the inverter. This is

more efficient than vertical wind turbines with a

3.5m/s or even 4.5m/s start up wind speed. The

technical characteristics of the adopted wind

turbines provided by the company of AEOLOS

Wind turbine have been presented in Figure 2,

Figure 3 and Table 1 (AEOLOS WIND TURBINE,

2013).

Figure 2: AEOLOS-V300W Power curve

2.2 Effect of the Pitch Angle

2.2.1 Angle of Attack

The angle of attack is expressed as (Mazharul ,

2008) (Travis, 2011) (S. Lain, 2010):

-1

sin( )

tan

cos( )



















(1)

Where λ is the tip speed ratio and θ is the azimuth

angle.

For the turbines with variable pitch angle, the angle

of attack became:

-1

sin( ) sin( )

tan

cos( ) cos( )

  



  













(2)

Where β is the sinusoidal pitch angle, it depends on

the position angle and it varies between -19° and

19°, shown on Figure 5.

2.2.2 Output Power

Figure 3: AEOLOS-V600W Power curve

Figure 4: AEOLOS-V turbine

The mechanical power output is expressed as

(Mazharul , 2008) (Travis, 2011) (S. Lain, 2010):

ICCSRE 2018 - International Conference of Computer Science and Renewable Energies

250

.PT





(3)

Where

is the rotational velocity and T the total

torque, the expression founded is :



22 2

12cos()

PrNSkV



   

 (4)

Table 1: Technical characteristics of the AEOLOS-V

turbines

Geometry and

operating conditions

AEOLOS-

V-300W

AEOLOS

-V-600W

Number of blades[-] 3 3

Chord [m] 0.3 0.3

Rotor Height [m] 1.6 2

Rotor Width [m] 1.2 1.6

Rated Power[W] 300 600

Max Output Power

[W]

400 800

Tip Speed ratio[-] 3 3

Rated wind speed

[m/s]

10 10

Max wind speed

[m/s]

11 13

For the turbines with variable pitch angle, the power

output became:



22 2

12cos()

PrNSkV



   

 (5)

With the tip speed ratio



is expressed as (Mazharul,

2008) (Travis, 2011) (S. Lain, 2010):







(6)

The wind turbine rotor is characterized by its power

coefficient

0.5



 (7)

Where β is the sinusoidal pitch angle, N is the

number of blades, V is the axial flow velocity

through the rotor, θ is the angle azimuth angle of the

blades, ω is the rotational velocity, r is the radius of

the turbine, ρ is the air density, S is the swept area of

the rotor and k is the Wake Decay Constant.

Figure 5: The variation of the sinusoidal pitch angle of the

tree blades

3 RESULTS

This section illustrates the MATLAB simulation

results.

Figure 6 presents the validation curve of the output

power produced by AEOLOS-V 300W and

AEOLOS-V 600W with the wind speed. The tested

blade pitch angle is sinusoidal and vary between -

0.34 rad and 0.34 rad corresponding to -19° and

19°shown on figure 5.

As seen in figure 6, for the turbines equipped with a

variable pitch control, AEOLOS-V300W produces a

maximal output power (400W) in 8.5m/s instead of

13m/s while AEOLOS-V600W produced a maximal

output power (800W) in 10 m/s instead of 13m/s,

compared with the turbines with fixed pitch angle.

Table 2 shows a comparison of wind speed

corresponding to the maximal output power for both

turbines with variable pitch angle and fixed pitch

angle.

In term of wind speed, the turbines produce the same

power but in low wind speed compared with fixed

pitch angle, consequently the turbines don’t need a

height wind speed to achieve their maximal power

output.

The variation of the pitch angle between -19° and

The Impact of the Pitch Angle on the Power of the AEOLOS V300 and AEOLOS V600 Wind Turbines

251

19°, affects the power coefficient, and it increases by

30% compared with the fixed pitch angle. Table 3

presents the comparison of the improvement of the

Cp in this study with other researches.

As results the variable pitch angle has a satisfactory

effect on the vertical axis wind turbines, it increases

the power output by 30% compared with fixed pitch

angle. And the turbines equipped with the

mechanism of variable pitch angle reach their

maximal output power in low wind speed compared

with basic turbines.

Table 2: The wind speed corresponding on the maximal

output power for the variable and fixed pitch angle

Maximal wind speed

Fixed pitch

angle

Variable pitch

angle

AEOLOS-

V 300W

11m/s

8.5m/s

AEOLOS-

V 600W

13m/s

10m/s

4 CONCLUSION

This survey has been interested in the study of the

effect of the variable pitch angle on the vertical axis

wind turbines. The comparison has been carried out

in MATLAB and took in consideration AEOLOSV-

300W and AEOLOSV-600W wind turbines.

The above results have shown that the variable pitch

angle is an essential parameter, it influences

positively the performance of the vertical axis wind

turbines. In fact, for turbines with variable pitch

angle their maximal output power has been reached

in low wind speed compared with fixed pitch angle,

with a 30 % increase in the Cp factor.

Table 3: The comparison of the improvement of the Cp

with other studies

Pitch angles

(degree)

increased

Rezaeiha 2017 -2 6.6%

G. Abdalrahman

2017

-6,-4, 0, 4, 6 25%

M. El-

Samanoudy 2010

10° 19%

Present study

-19< β <19

30%

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