Abstracted/indexed

The aerodynamic impact of Gurney flaps is investigated on the rotor blades of the Berlin Research Turbine. The findings of this research project contribute to performance improvements of different-size rotor blades. Gurney flaps are considered a worthwhile passive flow-control device in order to alleviate the adverse effects of both early separation in the inner blade region and leading-edge erosion throughout large parts of the blade span.

The potential of collective offshore wind power is quantified using 16 years of hourly wind speed observations. Wind power intermittency is reduced through a hypothetical electricity grid connecting five sites at the Norwegian continental shelf. We identify large-scale atmospheric situations resulting in long-term periods of power shutdown. Wind power variability and risk measures decrease in an interconnected wind power system.

Wind turbines rotate clockwise. The rotational direction of the rotor interacts with the nighttime veering wind, resulting in a rotational-direction impact on the wake. In the case of counterclockwise-rotating blades the streamwise velocity in the wake is larger in the Northern Hemisphere whereas it is smaller in the Southern Hemisphere.

Lidar measurements of wakes generated by isolated wind turbines are leveraged for optimal tuning of parameters of four engineering wake models. The lidar measurements are retrieved as ensemble averages of clustered data with incoming wind speed and turbulence intensity. It is shown that the optimally tuned wake models enable a significantly increased accuracy for predictions of wakes. The optimally tuned models are expected to enable generally enhanced performance for wind farms on flat terrain.

New wind turbine designs require updated control parameters, which should be optimal in terms of the performance measures that drive hardware design. We show how a zeroth-order optimization algorithm can randomly generate control parameters, use simulation results to estimate the gradient of the parameter space, and find an optimal set of those parameters. We then apply this automatic controller tuning procedure to three problems in wind turbine control.

Leading edge erosion is an ever-existing damage issue on wind turbine blades. This paper presents the numerical finite element analysis model for incorporating a new leading edge protection component for offshore applications, which is manufactured from thermoplastic polyurethane, into wind turbine blade designs. The model has been validated against experimental trials at demonstrator level, comparing the deflection and strains during testing, and then applied to a full-scale wind turbine blade.

In this paper, the influence of optimal wind farm control and optimal wind farm layout is investigated in terms of power production. The capabilities of the developed optimization platform is demonstrated on the Swedish offshore wind farm, Lillgrund. It shows that the expected annual energy production can be increased by 4 % by integrating the wind farm control into the design of the wind farm layout, which is 1.2 % higher than what is achieved by optimizing the layout only.

Storms, typhoons or seismic actions are likely to cause permanent rotation of offshore wind turbine foundations. Excessive rotation jeopardizes the operation of the wind turbine. In this study geotechnical, loads and probabilistic modelling are used to develop a reliability framework for predicting the rotation of the foundation under cyclic lateral loading.

A new method is described to identify the aerodynamic characteristics of blade airfoils directly from operational data of the turbine. Improving on a previously published approach, the present method is based on a new maximum likelihood formulation that includes errors both in the outputs and the inputs. The method is demonstrated on the identification of the polars of small-scale turbines for wind tunnel testing.

A large-eddy simulation using the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) Palabos framework was implemented to calculate the wind field over the complex terrain of Bolund Hill. The results were compared to Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes and detached-eddy simulation (DES) using Ansys Fluent and field measurements. A comparison of the three methods' computational costs has shown that the LBM, even though not yet fully optimised, can perform 5 times faster than DES and lead to reasonably accurate results.

The digital terrain model is the first input in the computational modelling of atmospheric flows. The ability of thee meshes (high-, medium- and low-resolution) to replicate the Perdigão experiment site was appraised in two ways: by their ability to replicate the terrain attributes, elevation and slope and by their effect on the wind flow computational results. At least 40 m horizontal resolution is required in computational modelling of the flow over Perdigão.

Accurate prediction of the laminar-turbulent transition process is critical for design and prediction tools to be used in the industrial design process, particularly for the high Reynolds numbers experienced by modern wind turbines. Laminar-turbulent transition behavior of a wind turbine blade section is investigated in this study by means of field experiments and 3-D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) rotor simulations.

Very short-term wind power forecasts are gaining increasing importance with the rising share of renewables in today's energy system. In this work, we developed a methodology to forecast wind power of offshore wind turbines on minute scales utilising long-range single-Doppler lidar measurements. The model was able to outperform persistence during unstable stratification in terms of deterministic and probabilistic scores, while it showed large shortcomings for stable atmospheric conditions.

Calculations of annual energy production (AEP) and its uncertainty are critical for wind farm financial transactions. Standard industry practice assumes that different uncertainty categories within an AEP calculation are uncorrelated and can therefore be combined through a sum of squares approach. In this project, we show the limits of this assumption by performing operational AEP estimates for over 470 wind farms in the United States and propose a more accurate way to combine uncertainties.

The ProPlanEn team developed WakeBlaster, a new very fast numerical model for simulating the power output of wind farms. Accurate modelling of the waked flow enables the reduction of wind farm losses. By modelling the whole wind farm, WakeBlaster replaces simpler models which superimpose symmetrical solutions of the flow behind individual wind turbines. The paper describes the fundamental equations, discusses the scalability of the solution, and demonstrates the 3D flow on an offshore wind farm.

The application of an optical measurement method for the determination of rotor blade deformation and torsion based on digital image correlation (DIC) is presented. Measurement results are validated by comparison with comparative measurement data. Finally, aeroelastic simulation results are compared to DIC results. It is shown that the measured deformation is in very good agreement with the simulations, and therefore DIC has great potential for the experimental validation of aeroelastic codes.

Leading edge erosion has developed into a significant problem for the offshore wind industry. It is important to understand the offshore precipitation environment to model and predict the onset of erosion and to design systems to protect against it. In this study, the offshore environment was characterised using up-to-date measuring techniques. A general offshore droplet size distribution that can be used to improve lifetime prediction techniques has been presented.

One of the major challenges when working with wind turbine sensor data in practice is the presence of systematic changes in signal behaviour induced by malfunctions or maintenance actions. We found that approximately every third signal is affected by such change points and introduce an algorithm which reliably detects them in a highly automated fashion. The algorithm enables the application of data-driven techniques to monitor wind turbine components using data from commonly installed sensors.

At night, the wind direction often changes with height, and this veer affects structures near the surface like wind turbines. Wind turbines usually rotate clockwise, but this rotational direction interacts with veer to impact the flow field behind a wind turbine. If another turbine is located downwind, the direction of the upwind turbine's rotation will affect the downwind turbine.

Wind turbine blade prototypes undergo structural tests before they are used in the field so that any design failure can be detected prior to their operation. In this study, strength characteristics of a small-scale existing 5 m composite wind turbine blade is carried out utilizing the finite-element-method software package Ansys. The results show that the blade exhibits sufficient resistance against buckling. Yet, laminate failure is found to play a major role in the ultimate blade failure.

Wake losses significantly reduce the power production of utility-scale wind farms since all wind turbines are operated in a greedy, individual power maximization fashion. In order to mitigate wake losses, collective wind farm operation strategies use wake steering, in which certain turbines are intentionally misaligned with respect to the incoming wind direction. The control strategy developed is dynamic and closed-loop to adapt to changing atmospheric conditions.

This paper provides an understanding of grid-forming control of wind turbines that can enable their black-start and islanding functionalities. Four control strategies have been tested with the aim to compare their capability to deal with the energization transients of an HVDC-connected offshore wind power plant, while maintaining stable offshore voltage and frequency. This is a step forward in overcoming wind turbine control challenges to provide black-start/restoration ancillary services.

A wind turbine can actively influence its wake by turning the rotor out of the wind direction to deflect the wake away from a downstream wind turbine. This technique was tested in a field experiment at a wind farm, where the inflow and wake were monitored with remote-sensing instruments for the wind speed. The behaviour of the wake deflection agrees with the predictions of two analytical models, and a bias of the wind direction perceived by the yawed wind turbine led to suboptimal power gains.

The performance of an open-loop wake-steering controller is investigated with a new wind tunnel experiment. Three scaled wind turbines are placed on a large turntable and exposed to a turbulent inflow, resulting in dynamically varying wake interactions. The study highlights the importance of using a robust formulation and plant flow models of appropriate fidelity and the existence of possible margins for improvement by the use of dynamic controllers.

Multi-rotor wind turbines are an innovative solution to achieving cost-effective large-scale wind turbines. They utilize a large number of small rotors connected to one support structure instead of one large rotor. Benefits include reduction in cost, transport and installation simplicity, modular design, and standardization. This work compares different electrical systems in terms of cost, mass and efficiency and finds a star-type system (each rotor has its own cable) to be the most suitable.

Analytical wind turbine wake models are of high interest for wind farm designers: they provide an estimation of wake losses for a given layout at a low computational cost. Consequently they are heavily used for wind farm design and power production evaluation. While most analytical models focus on far-wake characteristics, we propose an approach that is able to represent both near- and far-wake velocity deficit, enabling the simulation of closely packed wind farms.

We extend the common characterisation and modelling of wind time series with respect to higher-order statistics. We present an approach which enables us to obtain the general multipoint statistics of wind time series measured. This work is an important step in a more comprehensive description of wind also including extreme events. Important is that we show how stochastic equations can be derived from measured wind data which can be used to model long time series.

Before constructing wind farms we need to know how much energy they will produce. This requires knowledge of long-term wind conditions from either measurements or models. At the US East Coast there are few wind measurements and little experience with offshore wind farms. Therefore, we created a satellite-based high-resolution wind resource map to quantify spatial variations in the wind conditions over potential sites for wind farms and found larger variation than modelling suggested.

We present and evaluate an improved method for predicting wind turbine power production based on measurements of the wind speed and direction profile across the rotor disk for a wind turbine in complex terrain. By comparing predictions to actual power production from a utility-scale wind turbine, we show this method is more accurate than methods based on hub-height wind speed or surface-based atmospheric characterization.

The paper presents an application of the Kalman filtering technique to estimate loads on a wind turbine. The approach combines a mechanical model and a set of measurements to estimate signals that are not available in the measurements, such as wind speed, thrust, tower position, and tower loads. The model is severalfold faster than real time and is intended to be run online, for instance, to evaluate real-time fatigue life consumption of a field turbine using a digital twin.