Yes, certainly mobile testing is an easy and cheap option. The limitation is that you need a very clam day with appropriate straight road. Your wind turbine should receive least interaction with vehicle itself and your system should be equipped with data logger, torque meter, and a wind anemometer. We did use the mobile testing and we were happy with our measurements.

You can use this idea when the wind speed is near to zero. Which kind of turbine, do you want to test?

I want to test a wind horizontal axis machine model with diameter of 2 meters.

I decided to test a wind turbine with vertical axis that i had designed. but i could not get suitable answer with your suggested way.

i suggest an other way to test : you can pivot the main shaft at certain speed and with having some data such as generator data and measuring performance of generator, wind speed near impellers.

what is your opinion about this idea? do you think it is possible to implement?

this is my mail address: [email protected], i will be glad to have more cooperation.

Aditya and Amirhosein,

The idea of using moving vehicle is certainly viable. What Ahmad Sedaghat commented is most relevant. With a flatbed van, the arrangement is certainly most adequate to test a full scale wind turbine of 2 m diameter. Of course you have to have all the instrument required.

I would also like to relay a real story of ground vehicle, used to test a full scale aircraft wing. This happened in India at HAL. The engineers then had the luxury of using the test airport runway to run the truck. It might look ridiculous, but the engineers then finally were convinced of their wing design and construction after the truck-on-runway test.

Looking at both cases, I am sure testing a wind turbine will only require a relatively slow drive. Imagine, a 12 m/s wind turbine, will only require a drive speed of 43.2 km/hr.

Wan Zaidi - I wonder how fast the engineers at HAL were driving to test their wing then ...