Julius Mulyono, Hadi Santosa, Albert Gunadhi
The availability of wind power in beach area, especially in Indonesia has not been utilized yet. The strong wind can be used to rotate the turbine#x2019;s rotor. Instead of fuel, we have successfully designed a new vertical wind turbine using wind power. Conventionally, horizontal wind turbine type has been commercially used in many power plants because it can transform wind energy to electricity, efficiently. However, it requires more space and thus, it cannot be employed in limited area. Vertical wind turbine offers smaller area compared to the horizontal one, but its efficiency is much lower. One reason to explain this is because the availability of blade area to convert the wind energy to electricity is relatively small. The energy conversion efficiency can be improved by modify the turbine design. We focus on modification the vertical wind turbine by adding a shaft, which additional blades have been incorporated to that new shaft. Specifically, we designed a two shaft-savonius wind turbine, used both shafts to clamp 6 pairs of blades, which 3 pairs of blades have been attached in each shaft. This design (double shaft with pairs of blades) can obtain more wind power. As a result, more electricity has been generated by using this new turbine. Moreover, the employment of lighter material in this new turbine has increased the energy conversion. The average of wind speed measured by anemometer is about 8 meter per second. This condition results shaft speed approximately 450 rpm and 14.4 Nm of torque. In summary, the electricity generated is about 780 watt hours AC. © Research India Publications.
Industrial Engineering Department, Widya Mandala Catholic University Surabaya, Kalijudan 37, Surabaya, 60114, Indonesia