Technical-economical optimization of horizontal axis wind turbines by means of the genetic algorithm

Abstract

Wind turbine design is a trade-off between its potentially generated energy and manufacturing cost represented by the area of turbine surface in this research, and both factors are highly influenced by a number of design parameters. In this research, first, a weighted sum of these factors, with a negative weight for power, is assumed as the perfo rmance function to be mini mized. Then, blade element modeling was performed for class NACA turbines to estimate the generated power based on the effective wind velocity in the area. As a novelty, a new algorithm based on fuzzy logic was proposed to determine the effective wind velocity by using the history of wind velocity in the area. The wind velocity, therefore, the generated power by a wind turbine, is largely dependent on its operation area. In the end, the genetic algorithm with decimal numeric genes was employed to determine the optimal design parameters of the turbine based on the recorded data. This study resulted in a computer program which integrated calculations of fluid dynamics into the genetic algorithm to optimally determine an appropriate turbine (its geometric parameters). The implementation of the proposed method on two different regions ended up with the design of the blade NACA5413 for Manjil and the blade NACA4314 for Semnan, both in Iran.