Articles | Volume 7, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-2003-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-2003-2022
Research article
 | 
12 Oct 2022
Research article |  | 12 Oct 2022

Current status and grand challenges for small wind turbine technology

Alessandro Bianchini, Galih Bangga, Ian Baring-Gould, Alessandro Croce, José Ignacio Cruz, Rick Damiani, Gareth Erfort, Carlos Simao Ferreira, David Infield, Christian Navid Nayeri, George Pechlivanoglou, Mark Runacres, Gerard Schepers, Brent Summerville, David Wood, and Alice Orrell

Related authors

Verifying QBlade-Ocean: A Hydrodynamic Extension to the Wind Turbine Simulation Tool QBlade
Robert Behrens de Luna, Sebastian Perez-Becker, Joseph Saverin, David Marten, Francesco Papi, Marie-Laure Ducasse, Felicién Bonnefoy, Alessandro Bianchini, and Christian-Oliver Paschereit
Wind Energ. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-117,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-117, 2023
Preprint under review for WES
Short summary
A Code-to-Code Comparison for Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Simulation in Realistic Environmental Conditions: Quantifying the Impact of Modeling Fidelity on Different Substructure Concepts
Francesco Papi, Giancarlo Troise, Robert Behrens de Luna, Joseph Saverin, Sebastian Perez-Becker, David Marten, Marie-Laure Ducasse, and Alessandro Bianchini
Wind Energ. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-107,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-107, 2023
Preprint under review for WES
Short summary
Going Beyond BEM with BEM: an Insight into Dynamic Inflow Effects on Floating Wind Turbines
Francesco Papi, Jason Jonkman, Amy Robertson, and Alessandro Bianchini
Wind Energ. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-109,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-109, 2023
Preprint under review for WES
Short summary
An insight into the capability of the Actuator Line Method to resolve tip vortices
Pier Francesco Melani, Omar Sherif Mohamed, Stefano Cioni, Francesco Balduzzi, and Alessandro Bianchini
Wind Energ. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-88,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-88, 2023
Preprint under review for WES
Short summary
Grand challenges in the design, manufacture, and operation of future wind turbine systems
Paul Veers, Carlo L. Bottasso, Lance Manuel, Jonathan Naughton, Lucy Pao, Joshua Paquette, Amy Robertson, Michael Robinson, Shreyas Ananthan, Thanasis Barlas, Alessandro Bianchini, Henrik Bredmose, Sergio González Horcas, Jonathan Keller, Helge Aagaard Madsen, James Manwell, Patrick Moriarty, Stephen Nolet, and Jennifer Rinker
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1071–1131, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1071-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1071-2023, 2023
Short summary

Related subject area

Thematic area: Wind technologies | Topic: Design concepts and methods for plants, turbines, and components
A neighborhood search integer programming approach for wind farm layout optimization
Juan-Andrés Pérez-Rúa, Mathias Stolpe, and Nicolaos Antonio Cutululis
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1453–1473, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1453-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1453-2023, 2023
Short summary
Enabling control co-design of the next generation of wind power plants
Andrew P. J. Stanley, Christopher J. Bay, and Paul Fleming
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1341–1350, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1341-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1341-2023, 2023
Short summary
Offshore wind farm optimisation: a comparison of performance between regular and irregular wind turbine layouts
Maaike Sickler, Bart Ummels, Michiel Zaaijer, Roland Schmehl, and Katherine Dykes
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1225–1233, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1225-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1225-2023, 2023
Short summary
A data-driven reduced-order model for rotor optimization
Nicholas Peters, Christopher Silva, and John Ekaterinaris
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1201–1223, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1201-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1201-2023, 2023
Short summary
Grand challenges in the design, manufacture, and operation of future wind turbine systems
Paul Veers, Carlo L. Bottasso, Lance Manuel, Jonathan Naughton, Lucy Pao, Joshua Paquette, Amy Robertson, Michael Robinson, Shreyas Ananthan, Thanasis Barlas, Alessandro Bianchini, Henrik Bredmose, Sergio González Horcas, Jonathan Keller, Helge Aagaard Madsen, James Manwell, Patrick Moriarty, Stephen Nolet, and Jennifer Rinker
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1071–1131, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1071-2023,https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1071-2023, 2023
Short summary

Cited articles

Abbott, I. H. and Von Doenhoff, A. E.: Theory of wing sections: including a summary of airfoil data, Dover Publ., New York, USA, 691 pp., ISBN 0486605868, 2010. 
Aeolus4Future: Efficient Harvesting of the Wind Energy, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, grant agreement no. 643167, https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/386860-a-breath-of-fresh-air-for-wind-energy, last access: 17 August 2022. 
Akwa, J. V., Vielmo, H. A., and Petry, A. P.: A review on the performance of Savonius wind turbines, Renew. Sustain. En. Rev., 16, 3054–3064, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2012.02.056, 2012. 
Allen, M.: Gauging public opinion on small wind turbines, https://www.youris.com/energy/renewables/gauging-public-opinion-on-small-wind-turbines.kl (last access: 17 August 2022), 2016. 
Arredondo-Galeana, A. and Brennan, F.: Floating Offshore Vertical Axis Wind Turbines: Opportunities, Challenges and Way Forward, Energies, 14, 8000, https://doi.org/10.3390/en14238000, 2021. 
Short summary
The paper is part of the Grand Challenges Papers for Wind Energy. It provides a status of small wind turbine technology in terms of technical maturity, diffusion, and cost. Then, five grand challenges that are thought to be key to fostering the development of the technology are proposed. To tackle these challenges, a series of unknowns and gaps are first identified and discussed. Improvement areas are highlighted, within which 10 key enabling actions are finally proposed to the wind community.