In this article the aeroelastic loads on a 10 MW turbine in response to unconventional wind conditions selected from a year-long large-eddy simulation on a site at the North Sea are evaluated. Thereto an assessment is made of the practical importance of these wind conditions within an aeroelastic context based on high-fidelity wind modelling. Moreover the accuracy of BEM-based methods for modelling such wind conditions is assessed.

Fluctuations in the power output of wind turbines are one of the major challenges in the integration and utilisation of wind energy. By analysing the power output fluctuations of wind turbine pairs in an offshore wind farm, we show that their correlation depends on their location within the wind farm and their inflow. The main outcome is that these correlation dependencies can be characterised by statistics of the power output of the wind turbines and sorted by a clustering algorithm.

Low-level jets (LLJs) are pronounced maxima in wind speed profiles affecting wind turbine performance and longevity. We present a climatology of LLJs over Iowa using output from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and determine the rotor plane conditions when they occur. LLJ characteristics are highly sensitive to the identification criteria applied, and different (unique) LLJs are extracted with each criterion. LLJ characteristics also vary with different model output resolution.

The design of a ducted wind turbine was optimized to maximize the power per total cross-sectional area of the device. The associated power coefficient was 0.70, which is significantly greater than that obtainable from an open rotor turbine. Furthermore, it was shown that there is an optimal duct length, which is 15 % of the rotor diameter.

As the offshore wind industry emerges on the US East Coast, a comprehensive understanding of the wind resource – particularly extreme events – is vital to the industry's success. We leverage a year of data of two floating lidars to quantify and characterize the frequent occurrence of high-wind-shear and low-level-jet events, both of which will have a considerable impact on turbine operation. We find that almost 100 independent long events occur throughout the year.

A model for computing vertical-axis wind turbine farms was developed using computational fluid dynamics open-source software. This model has the potential of evaluating wind farm configurations which can lead to a higher annual energy yield. Such configurations have not been studied thoroughly due to the fact that most analysis tools are computationally expensive. This model can also be run in personal computers within a matter of minutes or hours depending on the number of turbines.