Automated system for monitoring meteorological parameters to assess the wind energy potential of a wind energy installation

Abstract

The paper addresses the development of an information monitoring system for the parameters of a wind energy installation. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing popularity of autonomous energy sources for private households, while the market lacks universal, affordable solutions, and wind-energy specialists proposing new constructive solutions require tools for their experimental testing. The aim of the study is to create an information subsystem for monitoring and decision support for the experimental stand: a model of information flows, the structure of the hardware-software data-acquisition complex, and an autonomous means of displaying and storing measurement results without relying on a third-party cloud service. Within the study, the wind energy installation is treated using a "black box" approach: its state is assessed through a set of meteorological and aerodynamically relevant parameters, as well as the generated electrical power – wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure – rather than through the internal physical processes of energy conversion. The developed measurement complex is built on an ESP-WROOM-32 board with a cup anemometer, a DHT11 digital temperature and humidity sensor, a BMP180 atmospheric pressure sensor, and a wind-direction unit combining an HMC5883L magnetometer with an AS5600 magnetic rotary angle encoder. A custom Captive Portal has been implemented – a local web interface served by the ESP32 access point – displaying current readings and a wind speed graph for the last twenty-four hours without requiring an internet connection, while an hourly measurement history is autonomously stored on an SD card. The paper presents the theoretical basis for assessing wind energy potential – the calculation of air density based on the ideal gas equation of state and the wind power formula accounting for the Betz limit – and provides an analysis of climate data for the city of Odesa collected by the developed complex from January to August 2026. The average wind speed at the observation site (approximately two metres per second) is shown to be below the effective operation threshold of classic bladed wind turbines, which exemplifies the kind of computed picture the developed system provides to a wind-energy specialist for assessing the feasibility of a given constructive solution. The obtained results demonstrate that such an information monitoring system is a necessary tool for supporting experimental research on any small-scale wind energy installation.