OPTIMIZATION POWER OUTPUT OF HORIZONTAL WIND TURBINES BY USING CONE TUNNEL

Abstract

Wind turbine is an energy conversion tool (renewable energy). In line with the decrease in fossil oil reserves, therefore, renewable energy will be used as the replacement, including wind energy. Many agricultural areas have not received electricity from the Electricity Company, so that wind turbine is suitable for these agricultural areas. For areas with high wind velocities, the utilization of wind turbines is very effective and efficient, but for areas with low wind velocities, the utilization of wind turbines is less effective. The increase of wind velocity can be engineered by using cone tunnel namely by using the continuity equation. Thus, the author wants to use the wind velocity engineering to optimize the power generated by the wind turbines.From the calculation results, the wind velocity will increase 1.5 folds when flowed through the cone tunnel with dimension of 2.2 m to 1.7 m and for the wind velocity of 5 meters per second will generate 39 Watt power, and if using the cone tunnel as mentioned above will generate 150 Watt power. By performing testing using wind turbine with outer diameter of 1.64 m and inner diameter of 0.44 m, the following results were obtained: in a wind turbine without cone tunnel, the 4 m/sec wind velocity generates 12.75 Watt power, while with cone tunnel generates 17.1 Watt power. The increasing power is not comparable with the theory that should reach 37 Watt. Since the testing was performed in the mechanical engineering laboratory of UKI with the wind source from fan, therefore from the observations performed, we can guess that the increase of power is not comparable to the theory because the wind generated is uneven and even turbulence occurs.