Production of Wind Energy from Vertical Axis Wind Turbine in Trinidad

The aim of this study is to estimate the available power that can be generated from Vertical Axis Wind Turbines on existing Oil and Gas production Platforms offshore Trinidad.
The study was conducted at the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus. Data collected at a bpTT production platform offshore east coast Trinidad between the periods January 2019 to November 2019.
The East coast of Trinidad was chosen for this study due to the presence of high yearly wind speeds and the majority of the oil and gas production platforms in Trinidad are located here. The wind data was collected 80 kilometers off Trinidad Southeast coast, east of the bpTT Cashima production platform for the year 2019. The vertical axis wind turbine considered here was modelled using Parashivoiu's double multiple streamtube model concept. The VAWT model had three NACA0018 blade profiles, a blade length of 2.5 metres, and a diameter of 2 metres. The total rotor internal volume was chosen as a suitable objective feature to reduce its footprint on the production platform and low assembly costs, as the primary goal of the VAWT is to generate energy, primarily by lower cost manufacturing.
The monthly total power production of the modelled vertical axis wind turbine ranged from 5.43 KW to 20.34 KW. The VAWT's anticipated daily average power production ranged from 175 Watts to 678 Watts. It can be observed that the months January to July gave higher daily and monthly average power generation due to these months having the highest wind speeds due to local weather conditions.
The VAWT studied in this study has a single turbine capacity of 463 Watts per day on average, with a peak average of 678 Watts per day in June. 2019 had a total average power production of 151.11 KW. Since space is a concern for offshore installations, the turbine was sized so that it would not have a big footprint on the offshore platform. It is demonstrated here that VAWT’s installed offshore can produce power and substantial support and rationale is needed for the potential advancement of VAWT’s for conditions that prevail offshore Trinidad, owing to their lower extraction costs and more robust geometry due to the use of existing offshore platforms.