5 Search Results

Abstract. Wind farm control has been a topic of research for more than two decades. It has been identified as a core component of grand challenges in wind energy science to support accelerated wind energy deployment and to transition to a clean and sustainable energy system for the 21st century. The prospect of collective control of wind turbines in an array, to increase energy extraction, reduce structural loads, improve the balance of systems, reduce operation and maintenance costs, etc. has inspired many researchers over the years to propose innovative ideas and solutions. However, practical demonstration and commercialization of some of the moremore » advanced concepts has been limited by a wide range of challenges, which include the complex physics of turbulent flows in wind farms and the atmosphere, uncertainties related to predicting structural load and failure statistics, and the highly multi-disciplinary nature of the overall design optimization problem, among others. In the current work, we aim at providing a comprehensive overview of the state of the art and outstanding challenges, thus identifying the key research areas that could further enable commercial uptake and success of wind farm control solutions. To this end, we have structured the discussion on challenges and opportunities into four main areas: (1) insight in control flow physics, (2) algorithms and AI, (3) validation and industry implementation, and (4) integrating control with system design (co-design).« less

Atmospheric stability conditions have an effect on wind turbine wakes. This is an important factor in wind farms in which the wake properties affect the performance of downstream turbines. In the stable atmosphere, wind direction shear has a lateral skewing effect on the wakes. In this study, we describe changes to the FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady-state (FLORIS) wake engineering model to incorporate and parameterize this effect.

This study describes a detailed field-test campaign to investigate yaw-based wake steering. In yaw-based wake steering, an upstream turbine intentionally misaligns its yaw with respect to the inflow to deflect its wake away from a downstream turbine, with the goal of increasing total power production. In the first phase, a nacelle-mounted scanning lidar was used to verify wake deflection of a misaligned turbine and calibrate wake deflection models. In the second phase, these models were used within a yaw controller to achieve a desired wake deflection. This paper details the experimental design and setup. Lastly, all data collected as partmore » of this field experiment will be archived and made available to the public via the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmosphere to Electrons Data Archive and Portal.« less

Abstract Wind turbines are typically operated to maximize their performance without considering the impact of wake effects on nearby turbines. Wind plant control concepts aim to increase overall wind plant performance by coordinating the operation of the turbines. This paper focuses on axial‐induction‐based wind plant control techniques, in which the generator torque or blade pitch degrees of freedom of the wind turbines are adjusted. The paper addresses discrepancies between a high‐order wind plant model and an engineering wind plant model. Changes in the engineering model are proposed to better capture the effects of axial‐induction‐based control shown in the high‐order model.more » Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.« less

Abstract Recent research has demonstrated exciting potential for wind plant control systems to improve the cost of energy of wind plants. Wind plant controls seek to improve global wind plant performance over control systems in which each turbine optimizes only its individual performance by accounting for the way wind turbines interact through their wakes. Although these technologies can be applied to existing wind plants, it is probable that the maximum benefit would be derived by designing wind plants with these capabilities in mind. In this paper, we use system engineering approaches to perform coupled wind plant controls and position layoutmore » optimizations of a model wind plant. Using several cost metrics, we compare the results of this optimization to the original plant and to plants in which the control or layout is optimized separately or sequentially. Results demonstrate that the benefit of this coupled optimization can be substantial, but it depends on the particular constraints of the optimization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.« less