Turbines are becoming larger. However, it is important to understand the key drivers of turbine design and explore the possibility of a global optimum, beyond which further upscaling might not reduce the cost of energy. This study explores, for a typical farm, the entire turbine design space with respect to rated power and rotor diameter. The results show a global optimum that is subject to various modeling uncertainties, farm design conditions, and policies with respect to wind farm tendering.

Social aspects are gaining traction in wind energy. A recent publication by Kirkegaard et al. lays out social grand challenges. We discuss them for a more technologically focused audience. We describe the role of social sciences in wind energy research, showing insights, topics, and value-added for public engagement and planning, just ownership and value-based design. We reflect how social and technical sciences can jointly advance wind energy research into a new interdisciplinary era.

Wind energy will play a central role in the transition of our energy system to a carbon-free future. However, many underlying scientific issues remain to be resolved before wind can be deployed in the locations and applications needed for such large-scale ambitions. The Grand Challenges are the gaps in the science left behind during the rapid growth of wind energy. This article explains the breadth of the unfinished business and introduces 10 articles that detail the research needs.

We provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the art and the outstanding challenges in wind farm flow control, thus identifying the key research areas that could further enable commercial uptake and success. To this end, we have structured the discussion on challenges and opportunities into four main areas: (1) insight into control flow physics, (2) algorithms and AI, (3) validation and industry implementation, and (4) integrating control with system design (co-design).

We present a technique to support the optimal layout (placement) of wind turbines in a wind farm. It efficiently determines good directions and distances for moving turbines. An improved layout reduces production losses and so makes the farm project economically more attractive. Compared to most existing techniques, our approach requires less time. This allows wind farm designers to explore more alternatives and provides the flexibility to adapt the layout to site-specific requirements.

We have presented a methodology for including multiple wind profile shapes in a wind resource description that are identified using a data-driven approach. These shapes go beyond the height range for which conventional wind profile relationships are developed. Moreover, they include non-monotonic shapes such as low-level jets. We demonstrated this methodology for an on- and offshore reference location using DOWA data and efficiently estimated the annual energy production of a pumping AWE system.

We investigate the trade-offs in optimization of wake steering strategies, where upstream turbines are positioned to deflect wakes away from downstream turbines, with a probabilistic perspective. We identify inputs that are sensitive to uncertainty and demonstrate a realistic optimization under uncertainty for a wind power plant control strategy. Designing explicitly around uncertainty yielded control strategies that were generally less aggressive and more robust to the uncertain input.

Meteorological and oceanic datasets are fundamental to the modeling of offshore wind farms. Data quality issues in one such dataset led us to conduct a study to establish whether such issues are more generally present in these datasets. The answer is yes and users should be aware of this. We therefore also investigated how such issues can be avoided. The result is a set of techniques and recommendations for dataset producers, leading to substantial quality improvements with limited extra effort.

The design and management of an offshore wind farm involve expertise in many disciplines. It is hard for a single person to maintain the overview needed. Therefore, we have created WESgraph, a knowledge base for the wind farm domain, implemented as a graph database. It stores descriptions of the multitude of domain concepts and their various interconnections. It allows users to explore the domain and search for relationships within and across disciplines, enabling various applications.

We describe a tow test setup for the reproducible measurement of aerodynamic, structural dynamic and flight dynamic properties of tethered membrane wings. The test procedure is based on repeatable automated maneuvers with the entire kite system under realistic conditions. The developed measurement method can be used to quantitatively compare different wing designs, to validate and improve simulation models, and to systematically improve kite designs.

We present an experimental method for aerodynamic characterization of flexible membrane kites by in situ measurement of the relative flow, while performing complex flight maneuvers. We find that the aerodynamics of this type of wing depend not only on the angle of attack, but also on the level of aerodynamic loading and the aeroelastic deformation. We recommend using the relative power setting of the kite as a secondary influencing parameter.