Comparison of six horizontal axis wind turbines

The aim of designing the wind turbine rotors is to improve the power capture ability. Since the rotor control technology is currently limited to controlling the rotor rotational speed and the pitch of the blades, an increasing concern has been given to the morphing blades. In this paper, a numerical code has been developed and validated based on the blade element momentum theory (BEMT). Then we compare the performance improvements through these different methods. The NREL phase VI wind turbine is selected as a reference wind turbine, and then the performances of six different wind turbines are compared. The results show that the rotor rotational speed control ones can improve the power capture ability well. Toward the variable speed wind turbines, the pitch control and the morphing blade improve the power capture ability hardly. Toward the constant speed wind turbines, the morphing blade has better performance than the pitch control one.