Analysis of Short-Term Energy Storage for Mid-Size Hydrostatic Wind Turbine

This paper presents a novel method of capturing more energy from the wind using short term energy storage in a hydrostatic wind turbine. A hydrostatic transmission not only provides reliable operation but also enables robust energy management features like energy regeneration using hydraulic accumulators. In this study, turbulence-induced wind power transients occurring near rated power are exploited to extract more energy from the wind. Wind characteristics are analyzed to develop models to quantify the potential energy loss due to wind turbulence and energy gains from short term storage. A control strategy to achieve the above objective is proposed. A mathematical model for a proposed energy storage configuration is developed in MATLAB/Simulink. Results show that in a 50 kW mid-size wind turbine, the Annual Energy Production (AEP) can be increased by nearly 4% with a 60 liter accumulator.