It is well-known that energy harvesting from wind can be used to power remote\nmonitoring systems. There are several studies that use wind energy in small-scale systems, mainly\nwith wind turbine vertical axis. However, there are very few studies with actual implementations of\nsmall wind turbines. This paper compares the performance of horizontal and vertical axis wind\nturbines for energy harvesting on wireless sensor network applications. The problem with the use of\nwind energy is that most of the time the wind speed is very low, especially at urban areas. Therefore,\nthis work includes a study on the wind speed distribution in an urban environment and proposes a\ncontroller to maximize the energy transfer to the storage systems. The generated power is evaluated\nby simulation and experimentally for different load and wind conditions. The results demonstrate the\nincrease in efficiency of wind generators that use maximum power transfer tracking, even at low\nwind speeds.
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