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.