Design and calibration of a 3D-printed cup-vane wireless sensor node

Abstract

There has been constant growth in the wind energy market. A study conducted in January 2018 by Global Market Insights Inc. predicted that the global wind energy market will surpass USD 170 billion by 2024. Before installation of a wind turbine, wind data must be collected from a prospective site for a minimum of one year. This has compelled the high demand for instruments used for collecting wind data. Various commercial cup anemometers and wind vanes have been manufactured for sale, some of which lack proper calibration or are not affordable for small-scale wind farmers, especially in developing countries. Wind data are a big data affair and call for instruments that handle them as such, unlike most commercial wind data collection instruments. This paper presents the design and calibration of a wireless 3D-printed cup-vane instrument for collecting wind data. This instrument represents a Wireless Sensor Node (WSN) in the Internet of Things (IoT). This study gave rise to an instrument system that was able to acquire wind data within a mean fitting deviation of ±0.063398 m/s, store them and present them wirelessly to an IEEE 802.15.4 protocol sink node. This was verified in the lab using 1 m/s to 16 m/s wind speeds at the Armfield™ wind tunnel and outside in an open field with 1 m/s to 5 m/s wind speeds.