Design manufacture and testing of a 3-Blade Wind Turbine/Solar Hybrid Generator for charging cell phones

One of the main factors that led to this research on wind and solar energy hybrid application was the need to empower rural communities with communication technology, namely cellular phones which are now widely used in Zambia. A major constraint to the use of these devices in the rural areas is the poor supply or the complete non availability of reliable electricity supply for recharging the cell phones. Research has shown that these rural areas despite constituting over 40% of the Zambian population, such population has little or no access to electricity from the national grid system mostly because of the long distances from the grid and the low economic activity in these areas, hence the need for utilization of the locally available energy resources for electricity generation. In this research the average wind speed was observed to be around 4m/s while the average solar insolation was observed to be above 5 KWh/m2/day. At these figures both the wind and solar components were able to generate more than enough voltage to charge a 12 volt battery and the required number of cell phones at peak demand, while the battery was able to sustain the power requirements at off line periods for both resources. The charge mix controller was also able to control the voltage between the required 12V to 14.7V range during times of excess power generation. This research has shown that the hybrid setup provides a high level of energy security and that coupled with energy storage namely, the battery, maximum supply reliability and security was ensured. The hybrid system due to the said advantages can be used as main power supply in off grid households, as standby supply in grid connected systems or as part of the grid system to offer more security