Identifying system characteristics of autonomous wind turbines: Measurement system design

In this study, an autonomous wind turbine system has been simulated. Meteorological data gathered at the turbine's location and the turbine's characteristics have been measured in one-second periods of time. Based on these measurement values, simulation values and measured values have been compared synchronously, using a software program prepared in a graphic media. The study initially used the MATLAB program for turbine simulation. However, the MATLAB program ran too slowly because of the study's large amount of data calculations. Moreover, observation of measured data simulation results on the same graph and simultaneous Internet results proved to be inefficient. For these reasons, a new program, Turbine Analyzer, was prepared, using Delphi programming language. Simulation results taken from MATLAB and Turbine Analyzer were compared, and the newly written program was tested. In this study, an original system, created to conduct turbine tests, has achieved characteristics tests of small-scale (20 kW and below) autonomous wind turbines. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.