Feasibility Study of Harnessing an Urban Wind Turbine to Supply an Electric Motorbike in Thailand

Abstract

This paper presents a feasibility study of the employment of a wind turbine to supply an electric motorbike in the urban area. The turbine investigated was selected based upon three dimensional numerical simulations. The turbine annual energy production (AEP) was evaluated using measured wind data which is in the form of Weibull distribution. The feasibility of the system was determined in terms of number of charges for a 1 kW motorbike. The effects the variation of the Weibull distribution was also studied. It is found that the AEP is most sensitive to the scale factor. From all investigated cases, The Weibull distribution with a shape factor of 1.9 and a scale factor of 5 provides the maximum AEP of 2,950 kWh or a total number of 2,458 charges a year.