This report describes a three-bladed, upwind, variable-speed, variable blade-pitch-to-feather-controlled multimegawatt wind turbine model developed by NREL to support concept studies aimed at assessing offshore wind technology.

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Definition of a 5-MW Reference Wind Turbine for Offshore System Development

Simulation and the monte carlo method

FAST User's Guide

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the state-of-the-art and emerging wind energy technologies from the electrical engineering perspective. In an attempt to decrease cost of energy, increase the wind energy conversion efficiency, reliability, power density, and comply with the stringent grid codes, the electric generators and power electronic converters have emerged in a rigorous manner. From the market based survey, the most successful generator-converter configurations are addressed along with few promising topologies available in the literature. The back-to-back connected converters, passive generator-side converters, converters for multiphase generators, and converters without intermediate dc-link are investigated for high-power wind energy conversion systems (WECS), and presented in low and medium voltage category. The onshore and offshore wind farm configurations are analyzed with respect to the series/parallel connection of wind turbine ac/dc output terminals, and high voltage ac/dc transmission. The fault-ride through compliance methods used in the induction and synchronous generator based WECS are also discussed. The past, present and future trends in megawatt WECS are reviewed in terms of mechanical and electrical technologies, integration to power systems, and control theory. The important survey results, and technical merits and demerits of various WECS electrical systems are summarized by tables. The list of current and future wind turbines are also provided along with technical details.

High-Power Wind Energy Conversion Systems: State-of-the-Art and Emerging Technologies

This report describes the development, verification, and application of a comprehensive simulation tool for modeling coupled dynamic responses of offshore floating wind turbines.

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Dynamics Modeling and Loads Analysis of an Offshore Floating Wind Turbine

†‡ The vast deepwater wind resource represents a potential to use floating offshore wind turbines to power much of the world with renewable energy. Comprehensive simulation tools that account for the coupled excitation and response of the complete system, including the influences of wind-inflow, aerodynamics, structural dynamics, controls, and, for offshore systems, waves, currents, and hydrodynamics, are used to design and analyze wind turbines. Continuing our work presented previously, we outline the development of such an analysis tool for floating offshore wind turbines, including a recently added, quasi-static mooring system module. The fully coupled simulator was developed with enough sophistication to address the limitations of previous frequency and time domain studies and to have the features required to perform an integrated loads analysis. It is also universal enough to analyze a variety of wind turbine, support platform, and mooring system configurations. The simulation capability was tested by model-to-model comparisons to ensure its correctness. The results of all of the verification exercises are favorable and give us confidence to pursue more thorough investigations into the behavior of floating offshore wind turbines. Some of the potential challenges to their design are highlighted through sample response simulations.

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Development and Verification of a Fully Coupled Simulator for Offshore Wind Turbines

This report describes the adaptation of a wind turbine performance code for use in the development of a general use design code and optimization method for stall-regulated horizontal-axis hydrokinetic turbine rotors. This rotor optimization code couples a modern genetic algorithm and blade-element momentum performance code in a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) that allows for rapid and intuitive design of optimal stall-regulated rotors. This optimization method calculates the optimal chord, twist, and hydrofoil distributions which maximize the hydrodynamic efficiency and ensure that the rotor produces an ideal power curve and avoids cavitation. Optimizing a rotor for maximum efficiency does not necessarily create a turbine with the lowest cost of energy, but maximizing the efficiency is an excellent criterion to use as a first pass in the design process. To test the capabilities of this optimization method, two conceptual rotors were designed which successfully met the design objectives.

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Hydrodynamic Optimization Method and Design Code for Stall-Regulated Hydrokinetic Turbine Rotors

The objective of this paper is to assess the second-order hydrodynamic effects on a semisubmersible floating offshore wind turbine. Second-order hydrodynamics induce loads and motions at the sum- and difference-frequencies of the incident waves. These effects have often been ignored in offshore wind analysis, under the assumption that they are significantly smaller than first-order effects. The sum- and difference-frequency loads can, however, excite eigenfrequencies of a floating system, leading to large oscillations that strain the mooring system or vibrations that cause fatigue damage to the structure. Observations of supposed second-order responses in wave-tank tests performed by the DeepCwind consortium at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) offshore basin suggest that these effects might be more important than originally expected. These observations inspired interest in investigating how second-order excitation affects floating offshore wind turbines and whether second-order hydrodynamics should be included in offshore wind simulation tools like FAST. In this work, the effects of second-order hydrodynamics on a floating semisubmersible offshore wind turbine are investigated. Because FAST is currently unable to account for second-order effects, a method to assess these effects was applied in which linearized properties of the floating wind system derived from FAST (including the 6x6 mass and stiffness matrices) are used by WAMIT to solve the first- and second-order hydrodynamics problems in the frequency domain. The method was applied to the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Continuation OC4-DeepCwind semisubmersible platform, supporting the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's 5-MW baseline wind turbine. In this paper, the loads and response of the system caused by the second-order hydrodynamics are analysed and compared to the first-order hydrodynamic loads and induced motions in the frequency domain. Further, the second-order loads and induced response data are compared to the loads and motions induced by aerodynamic loading as solved by FAST.

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The effects of second-order hydrodynamics on a semisubmersible floating offshore wind turbine

Failure of the drivetrain components is currently listed among the most problematic failures during the operational lifetime of a wind turbine. Guaranteeing robust and reliable drivetrain designs is important to minimize the wind turbine downtime as well as to meet demand in both power quantity and quality. While aeroelastic codes are often used in the design of wind turbine controllers, the drivetrain model in such codes is limited to a few (mostly two) degrees of freedom, resulting in a restricted detail in describing its dynamic behavior and assessing the effectiveness of controllers on attenuating the drivetrain load. In the previous work, the capability of the well-known FAST aeroelastic tool for wind turbine has been enhanced through integration of a dynamic model of a drivetrain. The drivetrain model, built using the Simscape in the MATLAB/Simulink environment, is applied in this paper. The model is used to develop a power-electronics-based controller to prevent excessive drivetrain load. The controller temporarily shifts the closed-loop eigenfrequency of the drivetrain through the addition of virtual inertia, thus avoiding the resonance. Simulation results demonstrating the fidelity of the expanded drivetrain model as well as the effectiveness of the virtual inertia controller are presented.

Modeling and Control to Mitigate Resonant Load in Variable-Speed Wind Turbine Drivetrain

A database of meteorological and ocean conditions is presented for use in offshore wind energy research and design. The original data are from 23 ocean sites around the USA and were obtained from the National Data Buoy Center run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The data are presented in a processed form that includes the variables of interest for offshore wind energy design: wind speed, significant wave height, wave peak-spectral period, wind direction and wave direction. For each site, a binning process is conducted to create conditional probability functions for each of these variables. The sites are then grouped according to geographic location and combined to create three representative sites, including a West Coast site, an East Coast site and a Gulf of Mexico site. Both the processed data and the probability distribution parameters for the individual and representative sites are being hosted on a publicly available domain by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with the intent of providing a standard basis of comparison for meteorological and ocean conditions for offshore wind energy research worldwide.

Jason Jonkman

Papers

Development and Verification of a Fully Coupled Simulator for Offshore Wind Turbines

Hydrodynamic Optimization Method and Design Code for Stall-Regulated Hydrokinetic Turbine Rotors

The effects of second-order hydrodynamics on a semisubmersible floating offshore wind turbine

Modeling and Control to Mitigate Resonant Load in Variable-Speed Wind Turbine Drivetrain

The creation of a comprehensive metocean data set for offshore wind turbine simulations