In this work, we present an aerodynamic tool that can model an arbitrary collections of wings, blades, rotors, and towers. With these functionalities, the tool can be used to study and design advanced wind energy concepts, such as horizontal-axis wind turbines, vertical-axis wind turbines, kites, or multi-rotors. This article describes the key features of the tool and presents multiple applications. Field measurements of horizontal- and vertical-axis wind turbines are used for comparison.

Floating offshore wind turbines may experience large surge motions that, when faster than the local wind speed, cause rotor–wake interaction. We derive a model which is able to predict the wind speed at the wind turbine, even for large and fast motions and load variations in the wind turbine. The proposed dynamic inflow model includes an adaptation for highly loaded flow, and it is accurate and simple enough to be easily implemented in most blade element momentum design models.

In this paper, we have assessed to which extent mesoscale numerical weather prediction models are more accurate than state-of-the-art reanalysis products in characterizing the wind resource at heights of interest for wind energy. The conclusions of our work will be of primary importance to the wind industry for recommending the best data sources for wind resource modeling.

The gearbox is one of the main contributors to the overall cost of wind energy, and it is acknowledged that we still do not fully understand its loading. The study presented in this paper develops a new alternative method to measure input rotor torque in wind turbine gearboxes, overcoming the drawbacks related to measuring on a rotating shaft. The method presented in this paper could make measuring gearbox torque more cost-effective, which would facilitate its adoption in serial wind turbines.

The objective of the paper is to develop a data-driven output-constrained individual pitch control approach, which will not only mitigate the blade loads but also reduce the pitch activities. This is achieved by only reducing the blade loads violating a user-defined bound, which leads to an economically viable load control strategy. The proposed control strategy shows promising results of load reduction in the wake-rotor overlapping and turbulent sheared wind conditions.

Lidar-assisted control of wind turbines requires a wind field generator capable of simulating wind evolution. Out of this need, we extend the Veers method for 3D wind field generation to 4D and propose a two-step Cholesky decomposition approach. Based on this, we develop a 4D wind field generator – evoTurb – coupled with TurbSim and Mann turbulence generator. We further investigate the impacts of the spatial discretization in 4D wind fields on lidar simulations to provide practical suggestions.

This paper summarizes efforts done to understand the impact of design parameter variations in the physical system (e.g., mass, stiffness, geometry, aerodynamic, and hydrodynamic coefficients) on the linearized system using OpenFAST in support of the development of the WEIS toolset to enable controls co-design of floating offshore wind turbines.

There is continuous effort to try and improve the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine blades. This work shows that adding a leading-edge slat to wind turbine blades can significantly enhance the aerodynamic performance of wind turbines, even more than with vortex generators (which are commonly used on commercial turbines). The findings are obtained through wind tunnel tests on different airfoil–slat combinations.

This paper compares different vortex identification methods to evaluate their suitability to study the tip vortices of a wind turbine. The assessment is done through experimental data from the wake of a wind turbine model. Results show comparability in some aspects as well as significant differences, providing evidence to justify further comparisons. Therefore, this study proves that the selection of the most suitable postprocessing methods of tip vortex data is pivotal to ensure robust results.

In RANS CFD, the e^N-based method showed its superiority over local correlation-based transition models (LCTMs) coupled with the SST turbulence model for predicting transition behavior at high-Reynolds-number flows (3–15 million). We evaluated the performance of two LCTMs coupled with the SA turbulence model. As a result, the SA-based two-equation transition model showed a comparable performance with the e^N-based method and better glide ratio (L/D) predictions than the SST-based model.

In the wind energy industry, a digital twin is fast becoming a key instrument for the monitoring of a wind turbine blade's life cycle. Here, our introduced model updating with invertible neural networks provides an efficient and powerful technique to represent the real blade as built. This method is applied to a full finite element Timoshenko beam model of a blade to successfully update material and layup parameters. The advantage over state-of-the-art methods is the established inverse model.

The spoiler is found to efficiently rearrange the mean flow seen by thick aerofoil: adding lift throughout the positive angles of attack, the drawback is a high drag penalty coupled with high unsteadiness of the aerodynamic forces. The impact of this type of excitation will be quantified further in terms of energy production and fatigue in future work.

The small wind community relies on simplified wind models and energy production simulation tools to obtain energy generation expectations. We gathered actual wind speed and turbine production data across the US to test the accuracy of models and tools for small wind turbines. This study provides small wind installers and owners with the error metrics and sources of error associated with using models and tools to make performance estimates, empowering them to adjust expectations accordingly.

This paper presents a comprehensive aerodynamic design study for a 5 MW Darrieus offshore VAWT in the context of multi-megawatt floating VAWTs. This study systematically analyzes the effect of different, important design variables including the number of blades, aspect ratio and blade chord tapering in a comprehensive load analysis of both the parked and operating aerodynamic loads including turbine power performance analysis using a vortex-based aerodynamic model.

Hybrid solar and wind plant layout optimization is a difficult, complex problem. In this paper, we propose a parameterized approach to wind and solar hybrid power plant layout optimization that greatly reduces problem dimensionality while guaranteeing that the generated layouts have a desirable regular structure. We demonstrate that this layout method that generates high-performance, regular layouts which respect hard constraints (e.g., placement restrictions).

In the future there will be very large wind farm clusters in the German Bight. This study investigates how the wind field is affected by these very large wind farms and how much energy can be extracted by the wind turbines. Very large wind farms do not only reduce the wind speed but can also cause a change in wind direction or temperature. The extractable energy per wind turbine is much smaller for large wind farms than for small wind farms due to the reduced wind speed inside the wind farms.

In wind plants, turbines can be yawed to steer their wakes away from downstream turbines and achieve an increase in plant power. The yaw angles become expensive to solve for in large farms. This paper presents a new method to solve for the optimal turbine yaw angles in a wind plant. The yaw angles are defined as Boolean variables – each turbine is either yawed or nonyawed. With this formulation, most of the gains from wake steering can be reached with a large reduction in computational expense.

An accurate prediction of loads and power of an offshore wind turbine is needed for an optimal design. However, such predictions are typically performed with engineering models that contain many inaccuracies and uncertainties. In this paper we have proposed a systematic approach to quantify and calibrate these uncertainties based on two experimental datasets. The calibrated models are much closer to the experimental data and are equipped with an estimate of the uncertainty in the predictions.

Wind turbine wakes are dependent on the atmospheric conditions, and it is therefore important to be able to simulate in various different atmospheric conditions. This paper concerns the specific case of an unstable atmospheric surface layer, which is the lower part of the typical daytime atmospheric boundary layer. A simple flow model is suggested and tested for a range of single-wake scenarios, and it shows promising results for velocity deficit predictions.

Distinct zonations with their own fauna and flora were observed. Algae and blue mussels dominated the structures from the surface down to 20 m, with tube-building fan worms and plumose anemones as the main colonisers found below. The park is in its "intermediate stage" and moving towards the "climax stage", with anemones covering most of the structures. The study was conducted to investigate if a floating wind park has the same fauna and zonations observed on traditional non-floating wind parks.

In this study, we propose a new method to detect sea breeze events from the Weather Research and Forecasting simulation. Our results suggest that the method can identify the three different types of sea breezes in the model simulation. In addition, the coastal impact, seasonal distribution and offshore wind potential associated with each type of sea breeze differ significantly, highlighting the importance of identifying the correct type of sea breeze in numerical weather/wind energy forecasting.

Measuring the variability of the wind is essential to operate the wind turbines safely. Lidars of different configurations have been placed on the turbines’ nacelle to measure the inflow remotely. This work found that the multiple-beam lidar is the only one out of the three employed nacelle lidars that can give detailed information about the inflow variability. The other two commercial lidars, which have two and four beams, respectively, measure only the fluctuation in the along-wind direction.

We described a new automated method to separate the wind turbine wake from the undisturbed flow. The method relies on the wind speed distribution in the measured wind field to select one specific threshold value and split the measurements into wake and background points. The purpose of the method is to reduce the amount of data required – the proposed algorithm does not need precise information on the wind speed or direction and can run on the image instead of the measured data.

The power performance of a wind turbine is often tested with the turbine standing in a row of several wind turbines, as it is assumed that the performance is not affected by the neighbouring turbines. We test this assumption with both simulations and measurements, and we show that the power performance can be either enhanced or lowered by the neighbouring wind turbines. Consequently, we also show how power performance testing might be biased when performed on a row of several wind turbines.

This study analyses two logistical strategies that could be considered for operation and maintenance of floating wind farms. The results show that the OPEX for the strategy with an offshore maintenance base (OMB) is 5 %–8 % lower than with a service operation vessel. When CAPEX and the net present value are taken into account, then the fixed costs associated with building the OMB have a significant impact on selecting a preferred strategy.

Marine operations represent a significant proportion of costs involved in the installation, operation, maintenance and decommissioning phases of a floating wind farm. The floating-wind industry is reaching array-scale deployments, and it is very important to optimize the various marine operations involved in each of these phases. This paper analyses the various challenges in the path and opportunities for encountering them by the transfer of technical know-how from similar offshore sectors.

Wind farms are becoming larger, and they are shaping up as one of the main drivers towards full green energy transition. Because of their massive proliferation, more and more attention is nowadays focused on optimal design of these power plants. We propose an optimization framework in order to contribute to further cost reductions, by simultaneously designing the wind turbines and cable layout. We show the capability of the framework to improve designs compared to the classic approach.