Study and Evaluation of Offshore Wind Energy Potential in Indian Sub continent through TRIZ using CFD

Offshore wind turbine is now being seriously considered as a crucial energy source to achieve not only CO2 reduction, but also to meet the enormous power shortages that occur in India and around the world. Nevertheless offshore wind energy is not competitive as on today with other sources of energy. There are combination of some select technologies which could bring about improvement in offshore wind turbine and wind farm design to increase the overall power output to increase the robustness, efficiency, capacity factor etc. To achieve these, combination of several technologies like drive train, blade count, blade material, blade shape, foundation etc are needed. But, this paper brings about a new dimension to identify feasible regions for wind turbine placement through a new technique called TRIZ ( Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). TRIZ uses scientific principles to identify and choose geographically the optimal location having high velocities. This new technique helped in applying the fluid flow principle of venturi to offshore applications. To evaluate the optimality of venturi region computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool was used. This paper demonstrates the venturi effect created in a region between dhanushkodi (southern tip of India) and northern tip of Srilanka and its geographical advantage in generating higher wind speeds and thus achieving enhanced output. This paper introduced three new concepts, first TRIZ helps in relating its principles to scientific phenomenon in new areas to achieve optimality and improvement. Second it uses the venturi concept for wind energy applications and third it validates the working of the identified principle using CFD and demonstrates that a concept identified through TRIZ is practically implementable in solving real life problems.