Energy Conversion and Management 69 (2013) 8794

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Energy Conversion and Management

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Technical characteristic analysis of wind energy conversion systems

for sustainable development
G. BoroumandJazi, B. Rismanchi , R. Saidur
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Wind energy as a clean, environmentally friendly and cost effective renewable energy resource, is taken
Received 30 December 2012 into consideration by many developed and developing countries as a promising means to provide elec-
Accepted 23 January 2013 trical energy. In feasibility study stage of the wind energy systems, the sustainability analysis is one of
Available online 6 March 2013
the main issues that can assure the investors and stockholders to invest in this renewable energy. Since
a system can be truly sustainable by achieving the energetic, ecological and economic sustainability, the
Keywords: present study will focus on the technical characteristics and performance analysis of the wind energy sys-
Wind energy
tems. The relations between reliability, availability, energy and exergy efciency, risk management and
Wind turbine
Sustainability
the environmental impact of the wind energy systems are investigated in the context of this study. It is
Exergy analysis concluded that the wind characteristics data and the wind speed are the main effective parameters on its
Exergy efciency reliability and availability. It is also revealed that considering the system loss, exergy efciency results of
Technical characteristics the wind energy systems are more reliable than the energy efciencies. Due to avoid future failure of the
systems, the causes of the failure are investigated and it was concluded that the structural failures caused
by storms and strong winds are known as the most prevalent failures.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction view of its performance. Numbers of studies are conducted in per-

formance evaluation of various systems using second law of
Renewable energy as the best substitution of fossil fuels is tak- thermodynamic, such as industrial boilers [4], gas turbines [5],
ing into account during the past decades to supply the worldwide and refrigeration cycles [6]. There are number of studies in litera-
energy demand. As the renewable energies are pollution-free, the ture, which computed the exergy efciency of the renewable re-
produced electricity from them is called green power [1]. Among sources. A comprehensive review on application of the second law
various renewable resources, wind energy as an abundant, free and of thermodynamic in investigating the performance of the different
environmentally friendly energy, experienced the fastest growing solar systems is presented recently by Saidur et al. [7].
trend [2]. In order to evaluate the feasibility of wind power to The performance analysis and technical characteristic investiga-
provide energy, technical characteristics, energy and exergy analy- tion of a system play a crucial role in evaluating the renewable en-
sis are studied. Generally, technical characteristics are studied in ergy systems and lead to the development and the optimization
ve aspects of reliability, maintenance requirements, availability, methods of the systems. The present study reviews the existing sur-
sustainability and environmental impacts. However, these aspects veys on the exergy analysis, sustainability, reliability and risk man-
are interrelated, for instance, the maintenance and availability of agement of wind energy applications. In the context of this study,
the system have signicant effects on its reliability. BoroumandJazi general characteristics of wind energy and wind turbine technolo-
et al. [3] provide a comprehensive discussion on the technical char- gies are presented in Section 2. Moreover, the sustainability aspects
acteristics of the renewable energy applications and their relation of wind energy are investigated in Section 3. Furthermore, the reli-
with systems performances. The classication of the technical ability and availability of wind energy are studied in Section 4,
characteristics and their relations are illustrated schematically in which is followed by performance analysis, and risk management
Fig. 1. of the system in Sections 5 and 6, respectively. The environmental
An alternative means to evaluate the performance of wind impacts of wind energy are studied in Section 7. Section 8 is a sum-
energy is exergy analysis. Applying this contemporary mary of analysis procedure of effective technical characteristic of
thermodynamic method to the system can give a more realistic wind energy system on its sustainability. The future direction in
Section 9 will give some outlines to who are interested to continue
Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 3 79674462; fax: +60 3 79675317. their studies in this eld. Finally, the conclusions of the study are
E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] presented in Section 9.
(B. Rismanchi), [email protected] (R. Saidur).

0196-8904/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2013.01.030
88 G. BoroumandJazi et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 69 (2013) 8794

wind turbine output [21]. Besides the wind conditions, the

mechanical performance and wind turbine design affect the wind
power, signicantly [22,23]. The wind conditions such as velocity,
distribution, etc. determine the potential of applying it for power
generation. Although wind is known as a clean source for energy,
but because of its uncertainty and unreliability in some cases, it
cannot be used as the load generation for the power dispatchers
in large scales [1]. The advantages and disadvantages of wind
energy as a summary of this section are tabulated in Table 3.

3. Sustainability aspects

Fig. 1. The relation between technical characteristics aspects of a system. A sustainable system is a system that can maintain a set of key
characteristics within certain ranges indenitely. Sustainability of
a system can be investigated based on different aspects of human,
2. General consideration of wind energy social, economic and ecologic. The main steps to achieve a sustain-
able wind power plant (WPP) are shown in Fig. 2 [24].
2.1. Global wind energy production capacity It can be clearly seen that the Weibull probability density func-
tion and articial neural networks are the prevalent methods for
Due to the fact that wind is caused by the air pressure difference evaluating the site potential. The rotor model, gearbox model
produced from heating effects of sun, the wind energy can be con- and generator model are investigated to assess the energetic and
sidered as a form of solar energy. The wind energy is mostly exergetic performance of the system. The environmental impact
employed for electricity generation. There are various measure- assessment and the economic analysis are conducted to ensure
ment methods to evaluate the performance of wind power such the ecological and economic sustainability of the system.
as capacity factor, availability, connect time, lifetime, reliability The sustainability aspects of wind energy conversion systems
and specic output [8]. Wind turbines are utilized as the means are investigated hereinafter in Section 47. In order to choose a
of converting the wind energy into rotating mechanical energy suitable wind site with a good potential, the methods to evaluate
[9,10]. To highlight the importance of wind energy, the global wind the reliability and availability of wind energy are explained. To
energy production capacities are presented in Table 1. meet the energetic sustainability, the performance of the system
It can be clearly observed that the wind energy production based on the rst and second law of thermodynamics is analyzed.
capacity altered from 4800MW in 1995 to more than 237GW in Furthermore, the risk managements and failure analysis would be
2011. Since the capacity and usage of wind energy is increasing used as an effective tool to achieve an energetic sustainable sys-
signicantly, it is reasonable to invest on utilizing sustainable tech- tem. Last but not least, critical assessment on the impact of wind
nologies to convert the potential energy of wind. energy conversion systems on the environment is a must complete
task to cover the ecological sustainability aspect.

2.2. Wind turbine

4. Reliability and availability of wind energy systems
Wind turbines are generally classied based on their congura-
tion into two main groups of horizontal and vertical axis. The As the renewable energy sources uctuate in highly stochastic,
advantages and disadvantages of both categories are compared in non-linear and multidisciplinary environments, the reliability and
Table 2. performance assessment of the renewable energy conversion sys-
The exergy efciency of the wind turbine is a measure for inves- tems are considered as challenging issues [25]. Reliability assess-
tigating the amount of stream exergy that turns into useful work. ment of wind farms plays a crucial role in generation system
The exergy efciency of the wind turbines is signicantly affected designing in order to meet the expected total demand. Determin-
by the meteorological parameters [15]. The detailed meteorologi- ing the availability and reliability of wind sources should be taken
cal characteristics of wind power are presented in literature into account in both stand-alone and hybrid systems.
[1619]. For instance, the season wise and location wise data of Wind speed is considered as one of the parameters with signif-
wind velocity was used to assess and investigate the wind energy icant effect on the reliability of the system. It is shown that the cut-
resources Karnataka in India [20]. In another study temperature, in and rotated wind speeds affect the reliability whilst the cut-out
pressure, relative humidity and wind speed were applied to pro- speed has no effect [26]. Xie and Billinton [27] stated that the reli-
pose a continuous bivariate model for wind power density and ability and energy production of the system are related to the wind

Table 1
Global wind energy production capacity [11].

Year Capacity (MW) Annual growth (MW) Annual growth (%) Year Capacity (MW) Annual growth (MW) Annual growth (%)
1995 4800 2004 49,461 8108 19.7
1996 6100 1300 27.1 2005 59,135 9674 19.6
1997 7482 1382 22.7 2006 74,176 15,042 25.5
1998 9670 2188 29.3 2007 93,959 19,783 26.7
1999 13,699 4029 64.3 2008 121,335 27,376 29.2
2000 18,040 4341 31.7 2009 158,012 36,678 30.3
2001 24,318 6279 34.9 2010 194,680 36,669 23.3
2002 31,184 6866 28.3 2011 237,502 42,822 22
2003 41,354 10,170 32.7
 G. BoroumandJazi et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 69 (2013) 8794 89

Table 2
Comparison summery between two common wind turbine categories [1214].

Horizontal wind turbine Vertical wind turbine

Difcult maintenance. Greater solidity and consequently heavier and more expensive rotor
Easier design to construct and install Less noise (due to low rotation speeds)
Cheaper (requiring less material per meter square of swept area) Highly reliable
More overall efciency Visually more attractive.
A yaw mechanism is not needed to turn the rotor against the wind

Table 3
Advantages and disadvantages of wind energy [13].

Advantages Disadvantages
Wind energy is considered as a clean energy Wind energy is intermittent
Wind energy is available as a domestic source Wind energy cannot be stored
Wind energy is one of the low price renewable energy Connecting remote wind farms to the supply network causes extra costs
Sound pollution and visual impact

Fig. 2. Sustainability aspects of wind energy systems.

site equivalence capacity ratio (ECR) The ECR index, is dened as

the ratio of the equivalent capacity to the power.
Generally, in power calculation of wind turbines, the wind
speed distribution is more important than the average wind speed.
In absence of detailed statistical data, wind distribution can be
estimated by tting to the probability curves. Weibull distribution
function is the most prevalent method to determine the wind
speed distribution. The probability density function (p(v)) is
dened by the following equation:
 k1 "  #
k
k V V
pV  exp  1
c c c

where k and c represent the shape factor and scale factor, respec-
tively. The relation between the probability and the wind speed is Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of wind speed distribution [12].
shown schematically in Fig. 3.
Ozgener and Ozgener [28] have performed a case study on a
small wind turbine in Turkey to evaluate its reliability utilizing the failure rate of 2.28  104/h and the reliability factor of 0.37
the exergy analysis. The results from September 2002 to November at 4380 h. Applying the following equation the reliability of the
2003 show that the average technical availability of the system is system (R(t)) was calculated:
around 94% while the real availability is around 52% and the capac-  X 
ity factor is around 12%. The calculated results indicate that the Rt expk1 k2 k3    kn t exp  ki t 2
maximum exergy efciency is 49%. The reliability analysis shows
90 G. BoroumandJazi et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 69 (2013) 8794

where k is the failure rate that is equal to the mean time between include the speed lower than cut-in or higher than cut-out. The
failures (MTBF) and t is time (h). The reliability value R(t), is equal availability factor is dened as follows:
to one when t is zero, and decrease continuously by increasing
AF 1  n=N 7
time and gets to the minimum of zero with large values of t
[29]. Vittal and Teboul [25] have also analyzed the performance where n represents the number of months in which the wind speed
and reliability of wind turbines with the aim of Monte Carlo meth- was lower than 4 m/s (the cut-in speed) and N stands for the total
ods based on the system transport theory. Unlike the traditional ap- number of studied months. The availability factor for different
proach, they simulate the performance and reliability of a wind investigated areas varies from 94% to 99%. The maximum potential
turbine simultaneously. The results are useful in logistic planning of power generation is reported to be 55 MW for a region with aver-
for assessing the expected maintenance costs and evaluating the re- age wind speed of 10.47 m/s and availability factor of 97.5%.
quired spare parts.
The performance, failure analysis and reliability assessment of a 5. Performance analysis of wind energy
wind farm consisting 15 wind turbines in India were presented by
Herbert et al. [30]. The reliability of the system was investigated The conducted studies on the performance analysis of the wind
based on the Weibull distribution technique and it was found that energy application based on energy and exergy analysis are
there is a direct relation between the reliability and the failure rate reviewed hereinafter in Sections 5.1 and 5.2, respectively.
of the system. The real availability of the wind farm based on the
performance analysis was reported to be around 83% whilst the 5.1. Energy analysis
technical availability was calculated to be 94%. The results show
that 79% of the failures were related to mechanical components The performance of a small scale horizontal wind turbine in a
and 21% were due to electrical components, it was concluded that low speed wind tunnel was analyzed by Sahin et al. [34]. They con-
choosing reliable components and effective maintenance method sidered the annual electrical energy generation as the indicator of
would result in more efcient systems. wind turbine performance. The proposed equation by Justus [35]
Mabel et al. [31] conducted a study on availability and reliabil- was used to calculate the actual power as it is shown below:
ity aspects of seven wind farms in India. The availability was
dened as the percentage of time in which the system is in power p 1=2qAV 3 cP 8
generating state. The following equation was used to calculate the where cP represents the power coefcient. A comparison between
availability of the wind farm. the power measurement results of the theoretical and experimental
 
Up time model revealed a deviation for the speed higher than 11 m/s [34].
Availability%  100 3 The generated power reached to 80 W at 14 m/s wind speed. Light-
Up time down time
ening houses or cabins, battery charging and water pumping were
The reliability of the system was computed based on the daily pointed out as the possible applications of these kinds of wind tur-
and monthly energy generation data. It was pointed out that by bines. In another study, the positive effect of aerofoils surrounding
improving the overall efciency of the system the reliability will the wind blades on the performance of wind turbine is shown by
be enhanced. Therefore, the effects of increasing the hub heights Varol et al. [9]. The maximum power of the wind blade was calcu-
on the overall efciency and consequently on the reliability were lated and it was found that 59% of the wind energy could be con-
analyzed. It was resulted that an increment of 10 m in hub heights verted to useful power.
improves the efciency by approximately 12%. The reliability per- Wind energy (E) was considered as the kinetic energy of the air
centage was computed by using the following equation and it was ow by Dincer and Rosen [36] as it is shown in the following
reported to be around 53%. equation:
 
No: of hours  loss of loade xpectation
Reliability %  100 E 0:5qAt V 3 9
No: of hours
4 The mentioned correlation determines the signicant role of
wind speed in the energy content of wind. The inuence of wake
The uncertainty, which is resulted from the wind conditions, is interferences on the wind turbine performance were investigated
investigated by Kwon [32]. The actual wind energy density was ob- experimentally by Adaramola and Krogstad [37]. They have mod-
tained using the following equation: eled two wind turbines that operate in the wakes of each other.
Z 1
Eactual T The wind farm efciency was expressed by the following equation:
Pwt Vfv VdV 5
A A 0
Pwake
g  100 10
where T and fv represent the duration and probability of wind con- Pfree stream
dition, respectively. The annual energy production of wind turbine
Combination of power produced by upstream and downstream
was computed by the following equation:
turbines was considered as Pwake whereas Pfreestream stands for the
X
T turbine power at design conditions. The losses due to operating
EAEP Pwt V j q 6 in the wake were reported to vary from 20% to 45%. It is also
j1
observed that the distance between turbines affects the wind farm
where q shows the normalized air density. The numerical proce- efciency and the amount of losses.
dure of predicting the uncertainty was validated by the data gath- The energy efciency results of the rst installed wind turbine
ered from a case study. The standard deviation of annual energy power plants were investigated by Baskut et al. [38]. They charac-
production by the average value was reported to be around 11%. terized the energy efciency of the wind turbine by its power coef-
In order to investigate the potential site to set up wind farms in cient which is shown in the following equation:
Jordan, the average wind speed, availability factor and potential
power generation are compared in different areas by Alsaad [33]. We
The availability factor is calculated by deducting the time intervals CP 11
galternator  gmechanic  0:5  q  p  R2  V 3r
in which the speed is not desirable. These undesirable wind speeds
 G. BoroumandJazi et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 69 (2013) 8794 91

where galternator and gmechanic were taken 0.98 and 0.97, respectively. factor resulted in higher exergetic efciency. The maximum total
The maximum amount of CP was reported to be 0.5926 according to loss of the ten considered wind site was reported to be around
Betzs criteria. The average produced energy was reported to be in 36% which was included 16% air density losses, 15% electrical losses,
range of 113,995 kW h to 120,990 kW h. 3% wind turbine losses and 2% wake losses.
Wind energy, its energy components and the energy efciency Baskut et al. [15] investigated the effect of meteorological vari-
of wind were discussed in the thermodynamic analysis of wind ables on exergy efciency of wind turbine power plants. The
energy by Sahin et al. [39]. The wind energy was computed using changes of exergetic efciency related to air density, humidity,
Eq. (2) and the power absorbed was calculated by the following ambient temperature and the pressure difference were studied.
equation: The exergy of the blowing air was considered equal to the amount
of kinetic energy as it was suggested by Cengel and Boles [43]. The
P 1=4qAV 31 1 a1  a2  12 exergy efciency of the wind turbine was computed using Eqs. (8)
where a was dened as the ratio of V2V1 which represent the and (14). The specic exergy of the humid air was calculated from
downwind and upwind speeds, respectively. The energy efciency the following equation [44]:
was considered as the ratio of the energy in product to the total   
T T
energy input. wa cp;a xcp;v T 0  1  ln 1 1:6078xRa T 0
T0 T0
Recently, in order to compute a more realistic monthly power  
P
density of wind Kitaneh et al. [40] dened Energy Pattern Factor  ln
P0
(EPF). Applying this factor, the monthly mean power density is cal-     
1 1:6078x0 x
culated by: Ra T 0 1 1:6078x ln 1:6078 ln 17
1 1:6078x x0
P 1=2qEPFm3 13 By investigating the effect of air temperature on the monthly
where EPF is expressed as the ratio of the mean power density for exergy efciency, it was found that exergy efciency increases by
the month to the mean power density at the monthly mean. temperature enhancement. It was also reported that increasing
the pressure difference between inlet and outlet of the turbine,
5.2. Exergy analysis the exergetic efciency decreases.
The exergy efciency of the horizontal and vertical axis wind
The exergy of wind energy as a renewable energy source was turbine were compared by Pope et al. [45]. A parametric study
investigated by Koroneos et al. [41]. It was shown that the ef- was applied to evaluate the wind turbine performance in different
ciency of the wind turbines in practice is less than the Betzs law operating conditions. To predict the key variables for each system,
efciency. The efciency of wind turbine was reported to be 40% the model was solved numerically using the FLUENT software. The
for high wind speed. The difference between the Betzs law ef- ratio of the useful work to the energy of the wind ow was dened
ciency and the practical efciency was considered as the exergy as the exergetic efciency, which is shown by the following
loss. The friction between the rotor shaft and bearings was deter- equation:
mined as the main source of losses. The exergy efciency change w_ out
with the variation of the wind speed was also investigated and w 18
_ flow
Ex
was reported that changing the wind speed from 5 m/s to 9 m/s,
exergy efciency varied between 35% and 45%. The exergy balance for the system was expressed by the follow-
The exergy and reliability of the wind turbine system were ing equation:
investigated by Ozgener and Ozgener [28]. The effect of wind speed
and blowing air temperature on the exergy efciency were also Ex1 w _ 2 Ex
_ out Ex _ dest 19
studied. The exergy of blowing air was considered equal to its
The exergy of the ow was considered to be made up of physical
kinetic energy and exergy efciency (e) was dened as the ratio
exergy and kinetic exergy, where the physical exergy was com-
of useful turbine work to the exergy stream of the wind as it is
puted by using the following equation [39]:
shown in the following equation:       
T P c T  T av erage
we _ cp T 2  T 1 T 0 cp ln 2  R ln 2  p 0
_ ph m
Ex
e 14 T1 P1 T0
Ex1  Ex2
20
where the exergy term presented in Eq. (14) can be computed by
Using the developed model of Zecher [46], T1 and T2 were deter-
using Eq. (15):
mined. The results of airfoil systems, showed a 5053% difference
_ a
Ex mw 15 between the energy and exergy efciencies. This amount changed
to 4455% for the vertical axis wind turbines.
where wa represents specic exergy. It was reported that at differ-
The exergy efciency of a wind turbine power plant in Turkey
ent wind velocity, exergy efciency varied from 0% to 48.7%. It was
was studied by Baskut et al. [38]. Using Eqs. (12) and (13), the exer-
also pointed out that the maximum exergy destruction occurred for
gy efciency of the power plant was calculated and was reported to
wind speed of 12 m/s.
vary between 0% and 68.2%. It is shown that an increment in mass
An innovative study to evaluate the exergy of wind farm related
ow rate resulted in a signicant rise of exergy input rate. Chang-
to the wind speed was conducted by Xydis et al. [42]. They have
ing the reference temperature from 281.55 K to 299.75 K, the exer-
analyzed the exergy of ten different wind site considering the elec-
gy efciency was changed from 39.3% to 68.2%.
trical losses, wake losses, turbine technical availability losses and
air density losses. Exergy efciency of the wind farms was com-
puted by using the following equation: 6. Risk management
Net AEP
Exergy efficiency  100% 16 Failure analysis and risk managements determine the most
8760  ci
likely causes of wind turbine failure and the result may prevent
where Net AEP represents the net energy produced and ci is the in- the future failures and accidents. In the rst step of the proposed
stalled capacity of wind farm. It was shown that lower capacity systematic procedure for failure investigation by [47], the site data
92 G. BoroumandJazi et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 69 (2013) 8794

and information including the compile data, original tower design compared in Table 5. Comparing the noise of wind farms with
report, installation manual, wind speed records and similar case other sources, can be concluded that they are not noisy.
studies should be investigated. In line with this stage, some exper- The harmful effects of wind turbines on birds and bats usually
imental and numerical analysis including laboratory tests and attract the criticism to this renewable energy. Developing the wind
tower analysis should be conducted. In the next step, all the certi- turbine technology can reduce their negative ecological effect. The
cation documents, construction and operation records are re- vertical axis turbines are potentially less harmful to the birds in
viewed. Finally, the results of the carried out tests and reviewed comparison with the horizontal axis ones.
records need a critical analysis. In a wind project in Texas, the effect is reduced by applying
Based on the reviewed failure cases by Chou and Tu [47], the avian radars with the aid of which the system would stop in case
main reason of the wind turbine failures are structural failures of detecting birds [56]. The methods of reducing the avian mortal-
with 35% share. In structural failures, the blade failure is the most ity of wind turbines are classied in the conducted study by Saidur
common one. The different failure causes of wind turbines are et al. [61]. The suggested methods for prevention and protection
shown in Fig. 4. are summarized in Table 6.
Among the 62 reported accidents of tower collapse, 19 cases Considering the large-scale wind farms, their effect on climate
were happened due to the storm and ice storm whilst seven cases change can be highlighted. The wind farms affect the climatic con-
were reported due to the strong winds. Therefore, inspection and dition in continental scale and their inuence on the global surface
evaluation of wind speed data and its effect on the tower are one temperature is negligible. It is shown that the local temperature
of the most important parameters that must be taken into account around the giant wind turbines increased during the night and de-
during the design, construction and operation stages. creases during the daytime [56]. To investigate the environmental
The problems associated with wind turbines are studied in dif- effects, some of the studies considered the amount of carbon diox-
ferent surveys, and some solutions for avoiding structural and ide, which can be saved in case of using wind energy instead of
components failures are presented. The summary of the studies conventional fuel [33].
are listed in Table 4.
8. Analysis procedure
7. Environmental impact
The technical characteristics of wind energy conversion system
To achieve a truly sustainable system, the environmental that play crucial role in sustainable development of the system can
impact of wind energy conversion systems should be determined be summarized as reliability, availability and environmental im-
as well. Since the wind energy does not pollute the environment, pact. In this section, it is tried to classify the required parameters
the impacts of wind energy systems on the environment are for analyzing each technical characteristic.
limited to their immediate surroundings such as; visual impact, In order to investigate the reliability of the wind energy conver-
mechanical and aerodynamic noise and effects on birds [56,57]. sion systems, wind speed and failure rate are the important param-
The effect of sound pressure level of wind turbines [58] and the eters to be considered. Generally, the cut-in speed and rotated
low- frequency aerodynamics noise [59] on the neighbors health wind speed affect the reliability of the system. The average wind
are investigated. The appropriate distance of wind turbines from speed data can be used to investigate the reliability as well as
the residential site is reported to be 2 km [60]. It is shown that the power of the system.
application of the optimized blades or serrated blades can decrease Considering availability of the system as portion of time in
the noise level [56]. The noise levels of different source are which the system is in power generating state, the uptime and
down time of the system are required for its availability analysis.
The daily or monthly generation data are usually used to investi-
gate the availability of the system. Since one of the effective
parameters on availability of wind system is the probability of
wind speed, the availability can be analyzed from wind speed view.
Environmental impacts of the energy conversion systems have
dominant role on their sustainability. Since the wind energy does
not have any signicant pollution, by controlling the visual impact,
mechanical and aerodynamics noise and their effects on birds, one
can claim a sustainable system.

9. Future directions

Besides the electrical application of wind energy, their mechan-

ical application and the performance analysis of windmills are po-
Fig. 4. Failure causes of wind turbines [47]. tential topics for future works. It is still essential to conduct
research on the technical characteristic of wind turbine and wind

Table 4
The problems associated with wind turbines [48].

Author Wind technology Problems Ref.

Blom et al. Wind turbine Fatigue failure [49]
Zhiquan et al. Horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) Sympathetic vibration problem [50]
Makkonen et al. Wind turbine Ice accretions [51]
Lyntte Wind farms Inadequate design, insufcient maintenance [52]
Ekanayake et al. Wind farms Harmonic frequencies above the designed tune frequencies [53]
Jacksan Wind turbine Wind turbine noise [54]
Mohammad et al. Grid-connected wind energy conversion system Uncertainties of load, noise [55]
 G. BoroumandJazi et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 69 (2013) 8794 93

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