Mirmilad Nabavian - MSc student in Mechanical Engineering of Biosystem, Agrotechnology Department, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Shahriar Kouravand - Associated Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Agrotechnology Department, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Mohammad Dehghani - Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Food Technology Department, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Ali M Kermani - Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering of Biosystem, Agrotechnology Department, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

In this paper, a mechatronic driver system to improve the performance of Darrieus vertical axis wind turbines was designed and manufactured. Darrieus turbines have higherefficiency rather than other vertical axis turbines but their main problem is weak self-starting in low and medium wind speeds. This mechatronic driver system designed to solve the self-starting problem. Driver system has three main parts consist of solar panel, electronic pieces and mechanical driver. An electrical interface circuit and buck-boost converter is designed to be able to control the charging and discharging current of the capacitive bank in addition to matching the voltage of the capacitor bank. This interface circuit was provided a constant voltage and current to start the Darrieus wind turbine for ۳۵ seconds. Results of the performance evaluation showed that the proposed starter mechanism was able to produce the required torque at wind speeds of ۳.۵ m/s. Also, wind energy has the ability to rotate the turbine at wind speed as ۲ m/s lower than ordinary working speed steadily

Mechatronic, Wind Turbine, Self Starting, Driver