The Electrical and Computer Engineering student at the University of Regensburg Peter Kuchenbecker has dealt in his bachelor thesis with the construction of an economic, vertical small wind turbine, which doesn’t require any authorization. Moreover the construction needed to be portable. For this special wind power station he integrated the Lufft WS200 ultrasonic wind sensor among other components. For what it is used and which other components are built-in you can read in the following blog post…
Photo: CC BY-SA 3.0, K4210, Wikipedia, http://tinyurl.com/OTH-Regensburg-WS200
My bachelor project consisted of the development of an independent, mobile small wind turbine that can be used flexibly in different locations. In the final version of the new technology a WS200–UMB compact weather sensor for wind measurements (direction and speed) from Lufft is mounted at a height of five meters. This is particularly important for an projected estimation of the yearly yield of the installation as well as for the ongoing monitoring of the system.
The power of the wind measuring device is supplied via a solar panel that enables autonomous operation. The sensor’s measuring data are stored in a Raspberry Pi serving as data logger. In addition, a categorization of the wind direction takes place assigning 75 percent of the wind of the east and west direction as a result.
The measuring principle of the used WS200 wind sensor is based on a runtime measurement of ultrasonic pulses in the individual air routes. The framework consists of two measuring paths shifted by 90 degrees with two ultrasonic transceivers, which are alternately driven for measuring the transit time between transmitter and receiver.
As you can see in the image of the WS200 measurement principle, it is generally a rectangular structure, which determines the air movement in the X and Y direction. The deviations of the air temperature and humidity are compensated by the reciprocal measurement of the sound velocity in the calculation. To save the data in the data center, we created a software background program that can be adjusted with the Lufft USB Config Tool.
The Raspberry Pi has the main task to inform about the sampling rate of the wind sensor and to retrieve the measurement data from the port, which it then stores depending on the configuration file. In order to connect the Raspberry Pi interface to the wind sensor, a special adapter that is easily attached to the GPIO pins, was produced.
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About the author: My name is Peter Kuchenbecker, I’m 24 years old and come from the Upper Palatinate, Michelsneukirchen, Germany. As a part of my Electronic and Information Technology study program with a focus on energy & automation technology I developed the wind turbine described above. In addition to the now almost completed studies, I’m a passionate soccer player as well as coach and are always looking for good reading material. My next step will be the start into the work life, for which I’m getting ready. |
