THE EFFECT OF THE BLADE SHAPES AND THE BLADE NUMBER OF VERTICAL

WIND TURBINE FOR SMALL ELECTRICAL POWER GENERATION

Mirmanto
Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Mataram
Jl. Majapahit no. 62, Mataram
Phone (0370)636087, (0370)6570632, e-mail: mirmanto70@yahoo.com

ABSTRAK

NTB mengalami krisis energi listrik dan terdapat beberapa lahan pertanian tadah hujan
sehingga perlu dilakukan usaha-usaha pemanfaatan energi alternative salah satunya yaitu energi angin.
Artikel ini merupakan hasil penelitian kincir angin poros vertical guna penghasil listrik rumah tangga.
Kincir terdiri dari 2, 3 dan 4 jumlah sudu dan bentuk sudunya lingkaran, bujur sangkar, persegi
panjang dan elip. Masing-masing luas sudu dibuat sama yaitu 0,25 m2. Panjang lengan kincir 75 cm.
Tinggi tower 6 meter di atas air laut. Lokasi penelitian di daerah Sandik kecamatan Batu Layar,
Mataram. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa kecepatan angin rata-rata berdasar BMG adalah 3 m/s
sedangkan dilapangan kecepatan angin rata-rata 1,2 m/s sampai dengan 1,33 m/s. Putaran kincir rata-
rata yang diperoleh pada penelitian ini adalah 15,08 RPM sampai dengan 16,35 RPM. Daya daya angin
dan poros maksimum yang diperoleh dari penelitian adalah 22,343 Watt dan 6,7 Watt. Pengaruh dari
bentuk dan jumlah sudu tidak siknifikan.

Katakunci : Energi Angin, Kincir Angin, Kecepatan, Putaran dan Daya.

ABSTRACT
NTB has an electrical power crisis seriously and there are some rice fields that dependent on
available rain, therefore it is very important to discover some alternative energy such as wind energy.
The result of research on vertical axis wind turbine for generating home electricity is explained in this
paper deeply. The wind turbine consisted of several blades (two, three and four blades). The blade
shapes were as circle, square, rectangular and ellipse. The blades area was 0.25 m2. The length of the
wind turbine arm was 0.75 m. The height of the wind turbine tower was 6 m above the sea. The
research location was in Sandik, Batulayar, Mataram. The research result shows that according to
BMG, the wind velocity is 3 m/s, but in the research location, the wind velocity is varied from 1.2 m/s
to 1.33 m/s. The rotation of the wind turbine was varied from 15.08 RPM to 16.35 RPM. The powers of
wind and turbine shaft were 22.343 Watt and 6.7 Watt. The influence of blade shape and number of
blades to the wind turbine characteristics are not significant.

Keyword: Wind energy, Wind Turbine, Velocity, Rotation, and Power.

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 INTRODUCTION

NTB region now is undergoing on electrical energy crisis. This crisis is indicated by the
activities PLN on shutting off the current distributed regularly. In addition, almost there is no chance
for new house to have a new electrical connection to the PLN. NTB Government has effort seriously to
solve this crisis but no result shows up yet. According to the secretary of BAPPEDA NTB, at that time
was Ir. Nanang Samudra, MSc, that NTB had planed to build a steam turbine plant like Paiton in East
Java. However, he said that no investor was interested to invest his/her fund.
Globally energy, which is available in the form of mineral fuel energy or un-renewable energy,
is depleted. On the other hand, human being should look for other energy (alternative energy). In the
Universe, there are many alternative energy forms. However, because of limitation of human being
capabilities, not all of the alternative energy forms are explored and advantaged optimally and
integrally yet. Several examples of alternative energy that have been advantaged are wind energy,
hydro energy and solar energy. One thing that can be considered in Mataram is wind energy. NTB is
beach region where the wind ongoing blows with enough velocity so that the wind energy is potential
to be utilized.
In Batu Layar district, there are large dry areas that only can be utilized when the rain drops off
so that these areas are only able to produce rice just once a year. According to BPPS 2002 that dry rice
fields in west Lombok reach almost 2149 ha. These are not worthy if no effort are conducted for
utilizing them in order to result crops/harvest. Therefore, using wind energy for pumping is one of
solution for eliminating those disadvantages. Except those dry rice fields, in Batu Layar, there are also
many houses that have no electrical power and water supplied yet. Therefore, the people get clean
water from well and light from traditional lamp only.
Wind potency in NTB, according to BPPT and several researchers, is big enough so that it can
be possibly used for turning the wind turbine. Gintings (1993), a researcher from LAPAN, revealed
that in East Lombok the wind velocity reached up to 5,4 m/s and it could resulted electrical power of
73,21 kWh/m2 . Based on the condition and situation above, it is important to do research of “The
effect of the blade shapes and the blade number of vertical axis wind turbine for electrical power
generation”.

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 LITERATURES REVIEW
Insufficient power generator causes electricity crisis in Mataram. So far, the power generation
supplied by the PLTD has been mainly produced using of Diesel Engine. As known, that Diesel
Engine is only able to produce small power except it is a very big one so that the electrical power
generated from electrical generator turned by Diesel Engine is low. Except low power, diesel engine
also needs fuel that nowadays its price launches highly. The cost of operating the diesel engine for
generating the electrical power is considerably high enough.
NTB Government has tried fully to overcome about the electricity problem, but it cannot be
solved yet. Nanang Samudra explained that no investor wanted to plant fund for this case. Therefore,
people have to look for an alternative energy for fulfilling their demands.

Energy
Energy is a capability to do a work. It cannot be destroyed nor created. It only can be changed
from one form to another form. As an example, in combustion process, chemical energy changes to be
heat energy (Tjokrowisastro et al., 1990; Changel, 1994). Sources of energy are mainly classified into
two groups. The first group is un-renewable energy and the second group is renewable energy. Un-
renewable energy such as earth oil, coal, fossil oil etc is now depleted whereas renewable energy such
as hydro energy, waste energy, wind energy, solar energy and so on is able to be recycled or renewed
(Kadarwati, 2001).

Wind
Wind is the moving air. Wind flows from low temperature or high pressure to high temperature
or low pressure. Usually, the region, which has low temperature, has high pressure and vice versa.
Moving air (wind) can be utilized to turn the blade of wind turbine so that wind energy can be changed
to be useful energy. Wind energy is one of energy that can be obtained freely in the universe and it is
available abundantly. Measurement resulted by BMG that was done in period of 1975-1989 shows that
more than 50 locations in Indonesia have wind that flows with velocity of 3 to 5 m/s. Research resulted
by Suryantini (2003) reveals that average daily power of energy in NTB reaches 975.644 watt. Wind
energy in this area has also been utilized for turning 7-wind turbines. Those turbines were as example
projects conducted by LAPAN in the period of 1992-1997 in Selayar, East Lombok. The similar

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 projects were also conducted in Irian Jaya. Those turbines used horizontal axis so that they were
constructed by using strong and rigid material and they also needed several devices mounted on them.
Because of those constructions, the total price of the turbines became rather expensive. According to
Ginting (1993), the velocity of the wind in East Lombok reached 5.4 m/s at 14 m of tower height. With
that wind velocity, Ginting predicted that the wind was able to produce 73.21 kWh/m2 of energy.

Wind Turbines
There have been many opinions about wind turbines and there have been many researchers who
conducted research on wind turbines. However, several things must be concerned in utilizing of wind
turbines. According to Ginting (1993) there are at least 3 things that must be considered on wind
turbines. Those are wind turbine characteristics, wind potency and efficiency of the system. With good
wind turbine characteristic, enough wind potency and good system, wind turbine can work optimally.
Several blade shapes of vertical axis wind turbines were also investigated. The blades shapes
were a half globe shape, cone shape and closed curve shape. Four a half globe blade wind turbine with
wind velocity of 5.2 m/s had 4.34% of efficiency, whereas other blade wind turbine had a lower
efficiency.
The characteristics of wind turbine, according to Ginting (1993), can be revealed as equation
below:
AV 3
P  C p t 1)
2
Where P is power (Watt), Cp is power rotor coefficient,  t is efficiency,  is density of air (kg/m3),
A is frontal rotor area (m2), V is wind velocity (m/s). Whereas the wind power can be predicted by
using the equation below:
AV 3
Pangin  2)
2
Where Pwind is wind power (Watt),  is air density (kg/m3), A is frontal rotor area (m2), V is wind
velocity (m/s).
Impulse wind turbine is a simple rotor-dynamic machine and it has almost the same work
principle as Savonius model. Both models, basically, use wind power captured by their face blade that
have shape of a half of globe. Power rotor coefficient can be calculated by using equation 3 as follows:

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 1
CP  3)
t
Soeripno (1992) ever conducted an experiment on utilizing SKEA that generates an electrical
power for small household in remote area that is far from conventional electricity connection. The
result of the research shows that the turbine has four blades and rotor with 2.8 m in diameters produces
500 Watts. This power is sufficient for household demand. The device that is used for measuring wind
energy in this research is electric generator. It generates current and voltage that can be measured by
using of multi tester. From output of multi-tester, it can be predicted the energy related to each wind
velocities that cross over frontal turbine area.

OBJECTIVES
The specific aims of this research are: To know the wind potency in Sandik, Batu Layar,
Mataram, To know the influences of vertical wind turbine’s blade shape and the number of blades, To
know the efficiency and the power of wind turbine, To give an alternative energy information.
Output of this research is a small-scale vertical wind turbine that can be used for generating
electrical power for small household. Electrical energy from this wind turbine can be used for turning a
centrifugal pump. Water pumped by that pump is used for watering rice fields and supplying water
consumption in Sandik. In addition, the research report can also be utilized as a reverence for further
SKEA research in this area.

EXPERIMENT SET UP AND PROCEDURE

A research method that is used in this research is literature study (collecting relevant data from
some reverences and from BMG) and an experiment that was done on beach as well as on dray rice
fields. Then all data collected in this research are analyzed for making conclusion.
1. Material used
1. Iron shaft
2. Concrete iron
3. Pulley and Belt
4. Bearing
5. Nut and bolt
6. Aluminum plat

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 2. Devices used
a. Generator
b. Anemometer
c. Tachometer
d. Ampere meter
e. Manometer
f. Thermometer
g. Volt meter
3. Experiment procedure
In this research, there are 4 types of rotor in which each rotor has 2, 4, and 6 blades. Diameter
of each rotor is 1.5 m. Blade shapes are parabolic, cube, beam and ellipse. The Blades are then
assembled with holder and shaft. The end of shaft is jointed with gear that is coupled with generator.
The wind turbine is mounted on tower that has height of 2 and 3 meters.

50 cm
m
6. 4c
Ø5 50 cm
a b 0.5 cm
40 cm

62.5 cm 63.7 cm
c d

a. Circle, b. Square, c. Rectangular, d. Elliptical

Figure 1. The shapes of frontal area of blades

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 75 cm 75 cm

blade

Bearing
Blade support

Transmission
600 cm

Generator

Frame

100 cm

Figure 2. Schematic of experiment apparatus

Testing on the wind turbine is conducted in several places; both are on the beach and in rice
field. Variables tested were wind velocity, RPM of rotor, current and voltage resulted by generator.
Based on those variable data, the efficiency of turbine or characteristic of turbine performance can be
obtained. Testing was done on various blade shapes and on the number of blades. Data were taken 10
times of each measurement.
Procedures:
1. Install rotor that has certain blades shapes and the number of blades.
2. Release the brake in order that rotor can turn around.
3. Note wind velocity, rpm, current and voltage resulted by generator and environment
temperature.
4. Repeat point 1 to 3 ten times.
5. Repeat procedures 1 to 4 with deferent blades model and deferent number of blades.
Data from each testing then are analyzed in order to know significance of blades shapes and the
number of blades affecting to the wind turbine performances.

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 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Electrical power variable could not be obtained because the wind turbine did not result the rpm
requirement of generator. Therefore, this paper only provides data of wind velocity (m/s), shaft rpm,
wind power (watt) and shaft power (watt). All of those data are shown graphically below.
From the graph, it is clear enough that the influence of the number of blades is not significant
so that data of wind turbine performances are very close together. What causes this phenomenon is due
to all blades almost have the same resistance for turning them self. One blade that has frontal area
perpendicular to the wind direction tends to turn the rotor but the other blades that do not face to the
wind direction tend to resist the rotor to turn. Therefore, the rotor that has 2 blades or more and that has
whatever blade shape almost has the same rpm although the wind that blows over it has the same
velocity. However, there is a possibility for the number of the blades to have significant deference of
characteristics when the rotor has big difference of blades number.
Average wind velocity is from 1.2 m/s to 1.33 m/s while average of rotation (RPM) is from
15.08 to 16.35 RPM. Maximum power resulted in the research is between 22.343 Watt and 6.7 Watt,
while wind velocity, according to Meteorology and Geophysics Bureau, is 3 m/s in average. This
difference value is caused by location where the measurement is taken.
Vertical axis wind turbine that has little number of blades is not suitable to be placed or used in
the area, which has low wind velocity because it cannot have high efficiency. In order to make it be
useful, it should be placed in the area that has high velocity wind flowing. Another graph shows
information of research data for turbine that has rotor with different blade shape. The influence of
blade shape is also not significant because all rotors have the same length of blade arms. Thus, all
rotors have the same torque.

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 Square blades

35.00

30.00

25.00 RPM for 4 blades

Wind power (watt) 4 blades
Shaft power (watt) 4 blades
20.00 RPM for 3 blades
Wind power (watt) 3 blades
15.00 Shaft power (watt) 3 blades
RPM for 2 blades
Wind power (watt) 2 blades
10.00
Shaft power (watt) 2 blades

5.00

0.00
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00
Wind velocity (m/s)

Figure 3. Research data for square blade shape

Rectangular blades

35.00

30.00

25.00 RPM for 4 blades

Wind power (watt) 4 blades
Shaft power (watt) 4 blades
20.00 RPM for 3 blades
Wind power (watt) 3 blades
15.00 Shaft power (watt) 3 blades
RPM for 2 blades
Wind power (watt) 2 blades
10.00
Shaft power (watt) 2 blades

5.00

0.00
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00
Wind velocity (m/s)

Figure 4. Research data for rectangular blade shape

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 Circle blades

35.00

30.00

25.00 RPM for 4 blades

Wind power (watt) 4 blades
Shaft power (watt) 4 blades
20.00 RPM for 3 blades
Wind power (watt) 3 blades

15.00 Shaft power (watt) 3 blades

RPM for 2 blades
Wind power (watt) 2 blades
10.00
Shaft power (watt) 2 blades

5.00

0.00
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00
Wind velocity (m/s)

Figure 5. Research data for circle blade shape.

Elliptical blades

35.00

30.00

25.00
RPM for 4 blades
Wind power (watt) 4 blades
Shaft power (watt) 4 blades
20.00
RPM for 3 blades
Wind power (watt) 3 blades
Shaft power (watt) 3 blades
15.00
RPM for 2 blades
Wind Power (watt) 2 blades
Shaft power (watt) 2 blades
10.00

5.00

0.00
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00
Wind velocity (m/s)

Figure 6. Research data for elliptical blade shape.

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 35.00
RPM for square blade shape

Wind power (watt) square blades

30.00

Shaft power (watt) square blades

25.00
RPM for rectangular blades

Wind power (Watt) rectangular blades

20.00
Shaft power (watt) rectangular blades

15.00 RPM for circle blades

Wind power (watt) circle blades

10.00
Shaft power (Watt) circle blades

5.00 RPM for elliptical blades

Wind power (Watt) elliptical blades

0.00
0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 Shaft power (Watt) elliptical blades

Wind velocity (m/s)

Figure 7. Research data for several blade shapes

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

CONCLUSION
After conducting an experiment with real condition in the field and analyzing research data,
conclusion can be made as follows:
1. Research does not result data that are in accordance with the desire yet.
2. Research is only able to collect data such as wind velocity, RPM, wind power and shaft power
while electrical power data cannot be obtained yet.
3. Wind velocity available is too low.
4. Average wind velocity is 6 Knot (data from Meteorology and Geophysics Bureau) and the real
average wind velocity in the field is from 1.2 m/s to 1.33 m/s.
5. Average RPM is between 15.08 RPM and 16.35 RPM.
6. Maximum wind power is 22.343 Watt.
7. Maximum shaft power is 6.7 Watt.
8. Shape and the number of blades do not influence significantly to the characteristics of wind
turbine.

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 SUGGESTION
After collecting research data, facing problems appeared and analyzing research data,
suggestion may come out as follows:
1. It is recommended that this model of wind turbine not be placed in the area that is surrounded
by any building but be placed on the beach/in the area that is full of high velocity wind
blowing.
2. Low speed wind turbine is only suitable for some purposes but not for electrical power
generating.

REVERENCES

Anonimus, 2002, Nusa Tenggara Barat Dalam Angka, BPS, Nusa Tenggara Barat.

Cengel, 1994, Thermodynamic an engineering approach, McGraw Hill, New York.

Gintings D, 1993, Pengembangan Instalasi Pembangkit Listrik Tenaga Angin di dusun Selayar,
Lombok Timur, Nusa Tenggara Barat, Warta Lapan no. 45, Jakarta.

Ginting, Soeripno, 1993, Pemasangan dan Uji Coba Pemanfaatan SKEA Listrik 500 Watt Untuk
Penerangan, Warta LAPAN no. 28,29, Jakarta.

Kadarwati, S., 2001, Studi Pembuatan Biogas dari Kotoran Kuda dan Sampah
Organik Skala Laboratoriu,.
http://www.litbang.esdm.go.id/litbang/biogas.doc+nilai+kalor%2Bsampah&hl=id.

Soeripno, 1992, Uji Coba Pemanfaatan SKEA Untuk Pengairan Sawah Serang Jawa Barat, Warta
LAPAN No. 60/61, Jakarta.

Suryantini, 2003, Potensi energi angin di NTB, Skripsi S1, Jurusan Teknik Mesin, Fakultas Teknik,
Universitas Mataram.

Tjokrowisastro dkk, 1990, Teknik Pembakaran Dasar dan Bahan Bakar, Diktat Kuliah, ITS,
Surabaya.

APPENDIX
WIND TURBINE PHOTOGRAPH

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