Top Notch Turbines

Overview

This project investigated how changing the pitch of a wind turbine blade affected how much electrical energy the turbine can produce, and which blade angle was optimum. Wind energy is very important in Kern County and throughout America as a renewable resource to replace burning coal and oil for electricity. Kern County is home to the third largest wind farm in America. Wind turbines work by converting wind energy into electrical energy through the turbine blades which turn a generator resulting in electromagnetic induction. In this project, a model wind turbine connected to a simple circuit was used to measure the electrical voltage output and current for both a two-blade and three-blade wind turbine design across blade pitch angles of -70o to +90o. A household fan was used as a constant-speed wind source placed a fixed distance from the wind turbine. The -10o blade angle resulted in the largest voltage and current. The positive pitch angles usually made the fan rotate in the opposite direction from the negative angles. The data showed more electricity produced at negative blade angles than the same positive angles. This was an interesting result that was likely caused by the spiral airflow from the fan, which caused the turbine to rotate in the same direction as the spiral airflow at negative blade angles resulting in more electricity, but in the opposite direction of the spiral airflow at positive blade angles resulting in less electricity. The simple flat turbine blades used in this project make use of mostly only one of the three main mechanisms of lift to convert wind energy into blade rotation to turn the generator. Future work would improve the blade shape to look more like an airfoil to convert wind energy into lift and blade rotation more efficiently. This project will help wind turbine engineers understand the effects of changing wind turbine blade pitch angle to harness wind more efficiently to generate the most electricity.

Competition history

• CSEF 2026 Alternative Energy (Junior Division) · Entry J-01-06

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