ABSTRACT
This work reports the design, construction, simulation and testing of a 300W wind battery charger. The design was carried out based on long term available wind data of Jos at 10m height above land. The average wind speed for Jos is 5.24m/s and rated turbine wind speed is 6.29m/s. A computer program for the design was written in JAVA programming language. It was found to match the results from manual calculation and was therefore valid. The designed components of the system were carefully constructed in a well-equipped workshop. The system was coupled and installed on the roof of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, at a height of 22m. The system was test run and the results recorded for a period of time on two consecutive days. A model was created using a second degree quadratic equation and the system was simulated. The calculated outputs were compared with the actual outputs and a root mean square error of 8.98% was found, showing that the closeness of fit of the calculated outputs to the actual characteristics of the wind-powered turbines is satisfactory. The system efficiency between cut-in and rated wind speed was determined to be 38.16%. A cost evaluation was carried out using current Nigerian market rates and the cost of producing the 300W wind energy battery charger was N74,850