Articles | Volume 9, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-321-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-321-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
07 Feb 2024
Research article |
| 07 Feb 2024
| 07 Feb 2024
Speeding up large-wind-farm layout optimization using gradients, parallelization, and a heuristic algorithm for the initial layout
Rafael Valotta Rodrigues
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Wind and Energy Systems Department, Technical University of Denmark, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark
now at: Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morissey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125, United States of America
Mads Mølgaard Pedersen
Wind and Energy Systems Department, Technical University of Denmark, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Jens Peter Schøler
Wind and Energy Systems Department, Technical University of Denmark, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Julian Quick
Wind and Energy Systems Department, Technical University of Denmark, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark
Pierre-Elouan Réthoré
Wind and Energy Systems Department, Technical University of Denmark, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark
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Javier Criado Risco, Rafael Valotta Rodrigues, Mikkel Friis-Møller, Julian Quick, Mads Mølgaard Pedersen, and Pierre-Elouan Réthoré
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 585–600, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-585-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-585-2024, 2024
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Wind energy developers frequently have to face some spatial restrictions at the time of designing a new wind farm due to different reasons, such as the existence of protected natural areas around the wind farm location, fishing routes, and the presence of buildings. Wind farm design has to account for these restricted areas, but sometimes this is not straightforward to achieve. We have developed a methodology that allows for different inclusion and exclusion areas in the optimization framework.
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Wind turbine positions are often optimized to avoid wake losses. These losses depend on atmospheric conditions, such as the wind speed and direction. The typical optimization scheme involves discretizing the atmospheric inputs, then considering every possible set of these discretized inputs in every optimization iteration. This work presents stochastic gradient descent (SGD) as an alternative, which randomly samples the atmospheric conditions during every optimization iteration.
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Current offshore wind farms have been designed to maximize their production of electricity at all times, and not to keep some reserve power in case of unexpected events on the grid. We present a new formulation for designing wind farms to maximize revenues from both energy and reserve markets. It is applied on a real-life wind farm. We show that profits are expected to increase in a significant way for wind farms designed and operated for reserve, with less energy supplied.
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Leading-edge erosion (LEE) can impact wind turbine aerodynamics and wind farm efficiency. This study couples LEE prediction, aerodynamic loss modeling, and wind farm flow modeling to show that LEE's effects on wake dynamics can affect overall energy production. Without preventive initiatives, the effects of LEE increase over time, resulting in significant annual energy production (AEP) loss.
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Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 883–917, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-883-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-883-2024, 2024
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Wind energy developers frequently have to face some spatial restrictions at the time of designing a new wind farm due to different reasons, such as the existence of protected natural areas around the wind farm location, fishing routes, and the presence of buildings. Wind farm design has to account for these restricted areas, but sometimes this is not straightforward to achieve. We have developed a methodology that allows for different inclusion and exclusion areas in the optimization framework.
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Maarten Paul van der Laan, Oscar García-Santiago, Mark Kelly, Alexander Meyer Forsting, Camille Dubreuil-Boisclair, Knut Sponheim Seim, Marc Imberger, Alfredo Peña, Niels Nørmark Sørensen, and Pierre-Elouan Réthoré
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 819–848, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-819-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-819-2023, 2023
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Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 255–276, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-255-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-255-2023, 2023
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Jana Fischereit, Kurt Schaldemose Hansen, Xiaoli Guo Larsén, Maarten Paul van der Laan, Pierre-Elouan Réthoré, and Juan Pablo Murcia Leon
Wind Energ. Sci., 7, 1069–1091, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1069-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1069-2022, 2022
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Wind turbines extract kinetic energy from the flow to create electricity. This induces a wake of reduced wind speed downstream of a turbine and consequently downstream of a wind farm. Different types of numerical models have been developed to calculate this effect. In this study, we compared models of different complexity, together with measurements over two wind farms. We found that higher-fidelity models perform better and the considered rapid models cannot fully capture the wake effect.
Mads M. Pedersen and Gunner C. Larsen
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Maarten Paul van der Laan, Søren Juhl Andersen, and Pierre-Elouan Réthoré
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Mads Mølgaard Pedersen, Torben Juul Larsen, Helge Aagaard Madsen, and Gunner Christian Larsen
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Mads Mølgaard Pedersen, Torben Juul Larsen, Helge Aagaard Madsen, and Søren Juhl Andersen
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Mads M. Pedersen, Torben J. Larsen, Helge Aa. Madsen, and Gunner Chr. Larsen
Wind Energ. Sci., 2, 547–567, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2-547-2017, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2-547-2017, 2017
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Dalibor Cavar, Pierre-Elouan Réthoré, Andreas Bechmann, Niels N. Sørensen, Benjamin Martinez, Frederik Zahle, Jacob Berg, and Mark C. Kelly
Wind Energ. Sci., 1, 55–70, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-1-55-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-1-55-2016, 2016
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Feasibility of a freely available CFD tool, OpenFOAM, in calculating flows of general relevance to the wind industry is investigated by comparing several aspects of its performance to a well-established in-house EllipSys3D solver. The comparison is focused on CFD solver demands regarding grid generation process and computational time.
The quality and accuracy of the achieved results are investigated by conducting the computations using identical/similar solver parameters and numerical setups..
Related subject area
Thematic area: Wind technologies | Topic: Design concepts and methods for plants, turbines, and components
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David Cubillas, Mireia Olave, Iñigo Llavori, Ibai Ulacia, Jon Larrañaga, Aitor Zurutuza, and Arkaitz Lopez
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Laurence Morgan, Abbas Kazemi Amiri, William Leithead, and James Carroll
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Tahir H. Malik and Christian Bak
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Tahir H. Malik and Christian Bak
Wind Energ. Sci., 10, 227–243, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-227-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-227-2025, 2025
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This study investigates how wind turbine blades damaged by erosion, along with changing wind conditions, affect power output. Even minor blade damage can lead to significant energy losses, especially in turbulent winds. Using simulations, it was discovered that standard power data analysis methods, including time averaging, can hide these losses. This research highlights the need for better blade damage detection and careful wind data analysis to optimise wind farm performance.
Unai Gutierrez Santiago, Aemilius A. W. van Vondelen, Alfredo Fernández Sisón, Henk Polinder, and Jan-Willem van Wingerden
Wind Energ. Sci., 10, 207–225, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-207-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-207-2025, 2025
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Knowing the loads applied to wind turbine gearboxes throughout their service life is becoming increasingly important as maintaining reliability with higher torque density demands is proving to be challenging. Operational deflection shapes identified from fiber-optic strain measurements have enabled the estimation of input torque, improving the assessment of the consumed life. Tracking operational deflection shapes recursively over time can potentially be used as an indicator of fault detection.
Jane Lockshin, Paula Pérez, Slater Podgorny, Michaela Sizemore, Paritosh Das, Jeffrey D. Laurence-Chasen, Paul Crook, and Caleb Phillips
Wind Energ. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2024-147, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2024-147, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for WES
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This study examines the potential for distributed wind energy across the contiguous United States by leveraging a novel modeling approach that utilizes a high-resolution dataset and analyzes over 150 million parcels. Modeling results reveal substantial opportunities for energy generation using distributed wind technologies. Additionally, findings reveal a substantial increase from prior modeling results in estimated technical and economic potential for distributed wind.
Kenneth Brown, Pietro Bortolotti, Emmanuel Branlard, Mayank Chetan, Scott Dana, Nathaniel deVelder, Paula Doubrawa, Nicholas Hamilton, Hristo Ivanov, Jason Jonkman, Christopher Kelley, and Daniel Zalkind
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 1791–1810, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1791-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1791-2024, 2024
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This paper presents a study of the popular wind turbine design tool OpenFAST. We compare simulation results to measurements obtained from a 2.8 MW land-based wind turbine. Measured wind conditions were used to generate turbulent flow fields through several techniques. We show that successful validation of the tool is not strongly dependent on the inflow generation technique used for mean quantities of interest. The type of inflow assimilation method has a larger effect on fatigue quantities.
Fiona Dominique Lüdecke, Martin Schmid, and Po Wen Cheng
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 1527–1545, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1527-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1527-2024, 2024
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Large direct-drive wind turbines, with a multi-megawatt power rating, face design challenges. Moving towards a more system-oriented design approach could potentially reduce mass and costs. Exploiting the full design space, though, may invoke interaction mechanisms, which have been neglected in the past. Based on coupled simulations, this work derives a better understanding of the electro-mechanical interaction mechanisms and identifies potential for design relevance.
Jenna Iori, Carlo Luigi Bottasso, and Michael Kenneth McWilliam
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 1289–1304, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1289-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1289-2024, 2024
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The controller of a wind turbine has an important role in regulating power production and avoiding structural failure. However, it is often designed after the rest of the turbine, and thus its potential is not fully exploited. An alternative is to design the structure and the controller simultaneously. This work develops a method to identify if a given turbine design can benefit from this new simultaneous design process. For example, a higher and cheaper turbine tower can be built this way.
Andrea Gamberini, Thanasis Barlas, Alejandro Gomez Gonzalez, and Helge Aagaard Madsen
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 1229–1249, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1229-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-1229-2024, 2024
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Movable surfaces on wind turbine (WT) blades, called active flaps, can reduce the cost of wind energy. However, they still need extensive testing. This study shows that the computer model used to design a WT with flaps aligns well with measurements obtained from a 3month test on a commercial WT featuring a prototype flap. Particularly during flap actuation, there were minimal differences between simulated and measured data. These findings assure the reliability of WT designs incorporating flaps.
Ruben Borgers, Marieke Dirksen, Ine L. Wijnant, Andrew Stepek, Ad Stoffelen, Naveed Akhtar, Jérôme Neirynck, Jonas Van de Walle, Johan Meyers, and Nicole P. M. van Lipzig
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 697–719, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-697-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-697-2024, 2024
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Wind farms at sea are becoming more densely clustered, which means that next to individual wind turbines interfering with each other in a single wind farm also interference between wind farms becomes important. Using a climate model, this study shows that the efficiency of wind farm clusters and the interference between the wind farms in the cluster depend strongly on the properties of the individual wind farms and are also highly sensitive to the spacing between the wind farms.
Javier Criado Risco, Rafael Valotta Rodrigues, Mikkel Friis-Møller, Julian Quick, Mads Mølgaard Pedersen, and Pierre-Elouan Réthoré
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 585–600, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-585-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-585-2024, 2024
Short summary
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Wind energy developers frequently have to face some spatial restrictions at the time of designing a new wind farm due to different reasons, such as the existence of protected natural areas around the wind farm location, fishing routes, and the presence of buildings. Wind farm design has to account for these restricted areas, but sometimes this is not straightforward to achieve. We have developed a methodology that allows for different inclusion and exclusion areas in the optimization framework.
Amalia Ida Hietanen, Thor Heine Snedker, Katherine Dykes, and Ilmas Bayati
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 417–438, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-417-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-417-2024, 2024
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The layout of a floating offshore wind farm was optimized to maximize the relative net present value (NPV). By modeling power generation, losses, inter-array cables, anchors and operational costs, an increase of EUR 34.5 million in relative NPV compared to grid-based layouts was achieved. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to examine the impact of economic factors, providing valuable insights. This study contributes to enhancing the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of floating wind farms.
Daniel Ribnitzky, Frederik Berger, Vlaho Petrović, and Martin Kühn
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 359–383, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-359-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-359-2024, 2024
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This paper provides an innovative blade design methodology for offshore wind turbines with very large rotors compared to their rated power, which are tailored for an increased power feed-in at low wind speeds. Rather than designing the blade for a single optimized operational point, we include the application of peak shaving in the design process and introduce a design for two tip speed ratios. We describe how enlargement of the rotor diameter can be realized to improve the value of wind power.
Aiguo Zhou, Jinlei Shi, Tao Dong, Yi Ma, and Zhenhui Weng
Wind Energ. Sci., 9, 49–64, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-49-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-49-2024, 2024
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This paper explores the nonlinear influence of the virtual mass mechanism on the test system in blade biaxial tests. The blade theory and simulation model are established to reveal the nonlinear amplitude–frequency characteristics of the blade-virtual-mass system. Increasing the amplitude of the blade or decreasing the seesaw length will lower the resonance frequency and load of the system. The virtual mass also affects the blade biaxial trajectory.
Xiaodong Zhang and Nikolay Dimitrov
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1613–1623, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1613-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1613-2023, 2023
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Wind turbine extreme response estimation based on statistical extrapolation necessitates using a small number of simulations to calculate a low exceedance probability. This is a challenging task especially if we require small prediction error. We propose the use of a Gaussian mixture model as it is capable of estimating a low exceedance probability with minor bias error, even with limited simulation data, having flexibility in modeling the distributions of varying response variables.
Arne Bartschat, Karsten Behnke, and Matthias Stammler
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 1495–1510, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1495-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-1495-2023, 2023
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Blade bearings are among the most stressed and challenging components of a wind turbine. Experimental investigations using different test rigs and real-size blade bearings have been able to show that rather short time intervals of only several hours of turbine operation can cause wear damage on the raceways of blade bearings. The proposed methods can be used to assess wear-critical operation conditions and to validate control strategies as well as lubricants for the application.
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
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With the challenges of ensuring secure energy supplies and meeting climate targets, wind energy is on course to become the cornerstone of decarbonized energy systems. This work proposes a new method to optimize wind farms by means of smartly placing wind turbines within a given project area, leading to more green-energy generation. This method performs satisfactorily compared to state-of-the-art approaches in terms of the resultant annual energy production and other high-level metrics.
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
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Better wind farms can be built by simultaneously optimizing turbine locations and control, which is currently impossible or extremely challenging because of the size of the problem. The authors present a method to determine optimal wind farm control as a function of the turbine locations, which enables turbine layout and control to be optimized together by drastically reducing the size of the problem. In an example, a wind farm's performance improves by 0.8 % when optimized with the new method.
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
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This paper investigates the effect of wind farm layout on the performance of offshore wind farms. A regular farm layout is compared to optimised irregular layouts. The irregular layouts have higher annual energy production, and the power production is less sensitive to wind direction. However, turbine towers require thicker walls to counteract increased fatigue due to increased turbulence levels in the farm. The study shows that layout optimisation can be used to maintain high-yield performance.
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
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Wind turbines have increasingly been leveraged as a viable approach for obtaining renewable energy. As such, it is essential that engineers have a high-fidelity, low-cost approach to modeling rotor load distributions. In this study, such an approach is proposed. This modeling approach was shown to make high-fidelity predictions at a low computational cost for rotor distributed-pressure loads as rotor geometry varied, allowing for an optimization of the rotor to be completed.
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
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Critical unknowns in the design, manufacturing, and operation of future wind turbine and wind plant systems are articulated, and key research activities are recommended.
Kisorthman Vimalakanthan, Harald van der Mijle Meijer, Iana Bakhmet, and Gerard Schepers
Wind Energ. Sci., 8, 41–69, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-41-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-8-41-2023, 2023
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Leading edge erosion (LEE) is one of the most critical degradation mechanisms that occur with wind turbine blades. A detailed understanding of the LEE process and the impact on aerodynamic performance due to the damaged leading edge is required to optimize blade maintenance. Providing accurate modeling tools is therefore essential. This novel study assesses CFD approaches for modeling high-resolution scanned LE surfaces from an actual blade with LEE damages.
Paul Veers, Katherine Dykes, Sukanta Basu, Alessandro Bianchini, Andrew Clifton, Peter Green, Hannele Holttinen, Lena Kitzing, Branko Kosovic, Julie K. Lundquist, Johan Meyers, Mark O'Malley, William J. Shaw, and Bethany Straw
Wind Energ. Sci., 7, 2491–2496, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-2491-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-2491-2022, 2022
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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.
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
Wind Energ. Sci., 7, 2003–2037, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-2003-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-2003-2022, 2022
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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.
Mads H. Aa. Madsen, Frederik Zahle, Sergio González Horcas, Thanasis K. Barlas, and Niels N. Sørensen
Wind Energ. Sci., 7, 1471–1501, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1471-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1471-2022, 2022
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This work presents a shape optimization framework based on computational fluid dynamics. The design framework is used to optimize wind turbine blade tips for maximum power increase while avoiding that extra loading is incurred. The final results are shown to align well with related literature. The resulting tip shape could be mounted on already installed wind turbines as a sleeve-like solution or be conceived as part of a modular blade with tips designed for site-specific conditions.
Edward Hart, Adam Stock, George Elderfield, Robin Elliott, James Brasseur, Jonathan Keller, Yi Guo, and Wooyong Song
Wind Energ. Sci., 7, 1209–1226, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1209-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1209-2022, 2022
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We consider characteristics and drivers of loads experienced by wind turbine main bearings using simplified models of hub and main-bearing configurations. Influences of deterministic wind characteristics are investigated for 5, 7.5, and 10 MW turbine models. Load response to gusts and wind direction changes are also considered. Cubic load scaling is observed, veer is identified as an important driver of load fluctuations, and strong links between control and main-bearing load response are shown.
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Short summary
The use of wind energy has been growing over the last few decades, and further increase is predicted. As the wind energy industry is starting to consider larger wind farms, the existing numerical methods for analysis of small and medium wind farms need to be improved. In this article, we have explored different strategies to tackle the problem in a feasible and timely way. The final product is a set of recommendations when carrying out trade-off analysis on large wind farms.
The use of wind energy has been growing over the last few decades, and further increase is...
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