Sistema inalámbrico de adquisición de datos implementado en túnel de viento para la caracterización aerodinámica de turbinas eólicas

Abstract

Nowadays, the use of renewable energies is increasing due to the growing interest in caring for the environment. The eagerness to have cleaner energy at low cost has given rise to sustainable technologies capable of taking advantage of renewable natural resources, among which solar photovoltaic, solar thermal and wind power stand out. Both wind and solar photovoltaic energy sources have seen a reduction in costs in recent years, which has led to an increasing implementation of renewable energies, to such an extent that renewable energies currently have a 27% share worldwide. Additionally, wind and solar photovoltaic energy sources represent more than 7% of electricity generation. In Colombia there has been an increase in interest in their use, being considered as one of the engines of development by opting for renewable energies can be seen in the GDP where they represented 9.7% in the period 2006-2009 and 11.2% in the period 2010-2013. Now, the goal in the country is to make the most of sustainable renewable energy sources, cover more areas and optimize the electric home utilities. The above in order to improve the quality of life of people, especially those living in remote regions. In Colombia, according to the Mining and Energy Planning Unit (Upme), the wind generation potential in Guajira is close to 15,000 MW of installable capacity. Therefore, it is intended to increase the participation of non-conventional renewable energies in the energy matrix, going from 1% to more than 12% and thus jumping from 50 MW to 2,400 MW, which is why Colombia is planning the construction of more than 50 wind farms that would have a capacity of 6,862 MW. Although there is a large amount of usable wind energy, there are projects where the turbine designs incorporate vortex generators on the surface of the blades, thus seeking to increase energy production by increasing the rotational speed. For the designs that propose the use of vortex generators, there is a need for wind tunnel tests to characterize the aerodynamic behavior of the turbines and identify improvements, This is proposed in the research project financed by the CIDC "Development of bio-inspired active vortex generators for wind rotors in rural areas of Cundinamarca through CFD", in which the implementation of vortex generators is studied to increase the aerodynamic efficiency of wind turbines, for which it is proposed to evaluate the aerodynamic behavior with CFD simulations. When resorting to CFD simulations for the characterization of the turbines, physical tests are required to validate the data with which the study of the designs will be carried out. Turbine tests are performed by introducing the turbine into a wind tunnel to characterize the aerodynamic behavior of the turbine. This requires a wireless data acquisition system that can be installed inside the wind tunnel. In order to capture the data and thus validate the simulations. For this reason, the need arises to implement a measurement system with high accuracy, fidelity, resolution and sampling frequency, capable of transferring the acquired data via wireless, and accessing them remotely. The development of a wireless embedded data acquisition system is proposed for the aerodynamic monitoring of a wind turbine in real time, in order to support designs that focus on making the most of the renewable resource of wind. This research project is carried out with the research group GITUD.