Small Wind Turbines for Electricity and Irrigation ― Design and Construction

This practical book deals with the technology of small-power wind turbines as opposed to widely diffused industrial wind turbines and wind farms. It covers the most common wind turbine technologies in the small power segment: horizontal axis both for electrical generation and water pumping, vertical axis of the Darrieus type, and vertical axis of the Savonius type. With each chapter following the same didactic scheme—a theoretical explanation and practical examples showing calculation procedures—it allows anybody with basic technical knowledge to design and build a small wind turbine for any site. A set of simple spreadsheets is available for download, each providing further examples of how to solve specific design problems and allowing the reader to play with changing parameters and see what-if. This simple trial-and-error learning process allows beginners to develop the feeling of the orders of magnitude involved in the design of a small wind power system, its potential advantages on other alternative solutions, and its limitations under some special circumstances.

Mario Alejandro Rosato is an electrical, electronic, and environmental engineer. He graduated in 1988 with a thesis on the construction of a low-cost small-sized wind turbine meant to supply electricity to rural schools in the Argentine Patagonia. In 1992 the first version of this book was published in Spain, which was much focused on self-construction of wind turbines in developing countries. In 2003 he won the John Hogg Award with a simple program, based on a spreadsheet, for the design of wind turbines meant for alternative marine propulsion. In 2010, the renewed interest of the Italian public opinion on small-sized wind turbines led him to start teaching about the subject at the University Consortium of Pordenone and other private institutes. In 2012 he was engaged by Acca Software, the Italian leader in software and technical training for engineers, to record a video course on how to select commercial wind turbines and design the whole system. In 2014, with the help of his wife Giovanna, he decided to translate the original book into Italian but, given the technological evolution in nearly one quarter of century, he finally decided to write a completely new book from a scratch.

The current edition is a not a mere translation to English of the Italian one. The Author included an additional chapter and further improvements of the pre-existing ones, and has adapted the content to meet the different needs of people living both in industrialized and in developing countries. The formulas and design method are presented together with some hints on how to implement them in standard spreadsheets without the need to resort to expensive simulation software.