Evaluation of the Performance of a Low Power Wind Turbine Applied to Isolated Communities of the Andean Region in Ecuador

The study of the wind potential available on a small scale in Ecuador in different sectors applied to remote communities is the main motivation of the present investigation. In this sense, a low-power wind turbine has been designed and built, which was installed in the community of Rio Blanco, Tungurahua province, in order to satisfy basic energy needs of a rural house located at 4040 meters above sea level; with operational capacity for an annual wind speed of six meters per second that supplies one hundred and seventy watts of useful power. The main objective of this research was to observe the behavior of an installed wind turbine to determine its power curve, in addition to establishing the variation of the power coefficient according to the wind speeds registered at the site, the data was discretized for a better using base, the curves represent the samples taken every day that denote that the presence of gusts of wind does not remain constant, which dispersed their treatment due to extreme weather conditions in the area where the research was carried out. This will allow the improvement of the machine and the increase of its performance.