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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When assessing wind resources for wind farm development, the first step is to measure the wind from tall meteorological masts. As met masts are expensive, they are not built at every planned wind turbine position but sparsely while trying to minimize the distance. However, this paper shows that it is better to focus on the similarity between the met mast and the wind turbines than the distance. Met masts at similar positions reduce the uncertainty of wind resource assessments significantly.

The complexity of wind farm operation increases as the wind farms get larger and larger. Therefore, researchers from three universities have simulated numerous different large wind farms as part of an international benchmark. The study shows how simple engineering models can capture the general trends, but high-fidelity simulations are required in order to quantify the variability and uncertainty associated with power production of the wind farms and hence the potential profitability and risks.

Several energy system scenarios towards 2050 for the North Sea region are analysed. With a focus on offshore wind, the impacts of meshed offshore grid and sector coupling are studied. The results show that the introduction of a meshed grid can increase offshore wind power installations by around 10 GW towards 2050. However, sector coupling is expected to increase offshore wind power installations by tens of gigawatts.

This work characterizes the unsteady aerodynamic response of a scaled version of a 10 MW floating wind turbine subjected to an imposed platform motion. The focus has been put on the simple yet significant motion along the wind's direction (surge). For this purpose, different state-of-the-art aerodynamic codes have been used, validating the outcomes with detailed wind tunnel experiments. This paper sheds light on floating-turbine unsteady aerodynamics for a more conscious controller design.

Wind power ramps have important characteristics for the planning and integration of wind power production into electricity. We present a new and simple algorithm that detects wind power ramp characteristics. The algorithm classifies wind power production into ramp-ups, ramp-downs, and no-ramps; and it can detect wind power ramp characteristics that show a temporal increasing (decreasing) power capacity.

Blade bearings of wind turbines experience unusual loads compared to bearings in other industrial applications, which adds some difficulty to the application of otherwise well-established calculation methods, like fatigue lifetime. As a result, different methods for such calculations can be found in the literature. This paper compares three approaches of varying complexity and comes to the conclusion that the simplest of the methods is very inaccurate compared to the more complex methods.

The main goal of this study is to develop a physical simulation of some extreme wind conditions that are defined by the IEC standard. This has been performed by a hybrid numerical–experimental approach with a relevant scaling. Being able to simulate these dynamic flow fields can generate decisive results for future scholars working in the wind energy sector to make these wind energy systems more reliable and finally helps to accelerate the reduction of the cost of electricity.

In this paper, a method to determine the angle of attack on a wind turbine rotor blade using a chordwise pressure distribution measurement was applied. The approach used a reduced number of pressure tap data located close to the blade leading edge. The results were compared with the measurements from three external probes mounted on the blade at different radial positions and with analytical calculations.

This study presents results from the Alaiz experiment (ALEX17), featuring the characterization of two cases with flow features ranging from 0.1 to 10 km in complex terrain. We show that multiple scanning lidars can capture in detail a type of atmospheric wave that can happen up to 10 % of the time at this site. The results are in agreement with multiple ground observations and demonstrate the role of atmospheric stability in flow phenomena that need to be better captured by numerical models.