Abstract:
There has been constant growth in the wind energy market. A study conducted in January
2018 by Global Market Insights Inc. predicted that the global wind energy market will surpass
USD 170 billion by 2024. Before installation of a wind turbine, wind data must be collected from a
prospective site for a minimum of one year. This has compelled the high demand for instruments
used for collecting wind data. Various commercial cup anemometers and wind vanes have been
manufactured for sale, some of which lack proper calibration or are not affordable for small-scale wind
farmers, especially in developing countries. Wind data are a big data affair and call for instruments
that handle them as such, unlike most commercial wind data collection instruments. This paper
presents the design and calibration of a wireless 3D-printed cup-vane instrument for collecting wind
data. This instrument represents a Wireless Sensor Node (WSN) in the Internet of Things (IoT). This
study gave rise to an instrument system that was able to acquire wind data within a mean fitting
deviation of 0.063398 m/s, store them and present them wirelessly to an IEEE 802.15.4 protocol
sink node. This was verified in the lab using 1 m/s to 16 m/s wind speeds at the ArmfieldTM wind
tunnel and outside in an open field with 1 m/s to 5 m/s wind speeds.
