¹Centre for Wind Energy Technology(C-WET), Chennai - 600 100, TN (INDIA) Under Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Govt. of India
²Rajiv Gandhi Technical University, Bhopal, M.P. (INDIA)
³Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, M.P. (INDIA)
Email:- katyal@cwet.res.in; ed@cwet.res.in

In the Indian context, if wind turbine installations have to exploit the estimated potential then the need of the hour is to utilize the complex terrains as most of the good windy sites in flat terrains have already been exhausted. The retrospective analysis of 25 years of wind speed was carried out using numerical weather prediction (NWP) model for a complex hilly terrain at Iddukki district of Kerala and the same was validated by onsite measurement using C-WET met mast for a period of one year with an objective to increase the accuracy of the model by reducing the bias. The data so obtained was used to arrive at the wind shear force which is the major governing parameter acting on the top of wind turbine towers. In this paper, various geometric configurations both for 73 m & 30m tall lattice type wind turbine towers were analyzed using STAAD PRO tool to arrive at the most optimal/least weight configuration by changing the base width and keeping the top width bare minimum and constant as per the requirements for housing the nacelle at the top, with in the limits of allowable blade deflections.