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

Energy is a vital input for social and economic development. As a result of the generalization of agricultural, industrial and domestic activities the demand for energy has increased remarkably, especially in emergent countries. This has meant rapid grower in the level of greenhouse gas emissions and the increase in fuel prices, which are the main driving forces behind efforts to utilize renewable energy sources more effectively, i.e. energy which comes from natural resources and is also naturally replenished. Despite the obvious advantages of renewable energy, it presents important drawbacks, such as the discontinuity of generation, as most renewable energy resources depend on the climate, which is why their use requires complex design, planning and control optimization methods. Fortunately, the continuous advances in computer hardware and software are allowing researchers to deal with these optimization problems using computational resources, as can be seen in the large number of optimization methods that have been applied to the renewable and sustainable energy field. This paper presents a review of the current state of the art in computational optimization methods applied to renewable and sustainable energy, offering a clear vision of the latest research advances in this field.

Optimization methods applied to renewable and sustainable energy: A review

Energy is an essential ingredient of socio-economic development and economic growth. Renewable energy sources like wind energy is indigenous and can help in reducing the dependency on fossil fuels. Wind is the indirect form of solar energy and is always being replenished by the sun. Wind is caused by differential heating of the earth's surface by the sun. It has been estimated that roughly 10 million MW of energy are continuously available in the earth's wind. Wind energy provides a variable and environmental friendly option and national energy security at a time when decreasing global reserves of fossil fuels threatens the long-term sustainability of global economy. This paper reviews the wind resources assessment models, site selection models and aerodynamic models including wake effect. The different existing performance and reliability evaluation models, various problems related to wind turbine components (blade, gearbox, generator and transformer) and grid for wind energy system have been discussed. This paper also reviews different techniques and loads for design, control systems and economics of wind energy conversion system.

A review of wind energy technologies

Multidisciplinary design optimization is a field of research that studies the application of numerical optimization techniques to the design of engineering systems involving multiple disciplines or components. Since the inception of multidisciplinary design optimization, various methods (architectures) have been developed and applied to solve multidisciplinary design-optimization problems. This paper provides a survey of all the architectures that have been presented in the literature so far. All architectures are explained in detail using a unified description that includes optimization problem statements, diagrams, and detailed algorithms. The diagrams show both data and process flow through the multidisciplinary system and computational elements, which facilitate the understanding of the various architectures, and how they relate to each other. A classification of the multidisciplinary design-optimization architectures based on their problem formulations and decomposition strategies is also provided, a...

Multidisciplinary design optimization: A survey of architectures

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 three different controller designs presented herein are similar and all based on PI-regulation of rotor speed and power through the collective blade pitch angle and generator moment. The aeroelastic and electrical modelling used for the time-domain analysis of these controllers are however different, which makes a directly quantitative comparison difficult. But there are some observations of similar behaviours should be mentioned: 1) Very similar step responses in rotor speed, pitch angle, and power are seen for simulations with steps in wind speed. 2) All controllers show a peak in power for wind speed step-up over rated wind speed, which can be almost removed by changing the parameters of the frequency converter. 3) Responses of rotor speed, pitch angle, and power for different simulations with turbulent inflow are similar for all three controllers. Again, there seems to be an advantage of tuning the parameters of the frequency converter to obtain a more constant power output. The dynamic modelling of the power controller is an important result for the inclusion of generator dynamics in the aeroelastic modelling of wind turbines. A reduced dynamic model of the relation between generator torque and generator speed variations is presented; where the integral term of the inner PI-regulator of rotor current is removed be-cause the time constant is very small compared to the important aeroelastic frequencies. It is shown how the parameters of the transfer function for the remaining control system with the outer PI-regulator of power can be derived from the generator data sheet. The main results of the numerical optimisation of the control parameters in the pitch PI-regulator performed in Chapter 6 are the following: 1) Numerical optimization can be used to tune controller parameters, especially when the optimization is used as refinement of a qualified initial guess. 2) The design model used to calculate the initial value parameters, as described in Chapter 3, could not be refined much in terms of performance related to the flapwise blade root moment (1-2 %) and tilt tower base moment (2-3 %). 3) Numerical optimization of control parameters is not well suited for tuning from scratch. If the initial parameters are too far off track the simulation might not come through, or a not representative local maximum obtained. The last problem could very well be related to the chosen optimization method, where more future work could be done. (au)

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Control design for a pitch-regulated, variable speed wind turbine

Optimization method for wind turbine rotors

This paper presents the wind turbine airfoil development at Riso. The design method is described together with our target characteristics for wind turbine airfoils. The use of the CFD code Ellipsys2D for prediction of final target characteristics is described together with the VELUX wind tunnel testing setup. Three airfoil families were developed; Riso-A1, Riso-P and Riso-B1. The Riso-A1 airfoil family was developed for rotors of 600 kW and larger. Wind tunnel testing and field testing showed that this airfoil family is well suited for stall and active stall control. However, sensitivity to roughness was higher than expected. Field tests of a 600 kW active stall wind turbine showed an estimated reduction in blade fatigue loading of up to 15% at the same annual energy yield and at the same time reduced blade weight and blade solidity. The Riso-P airfoils were developed to replace the Riso-A1 airfoils for use on pitch controlled wind turbines. Improved design objectives should reduce the sensitivity to roughness, but measurements are not yet available. The Riso-B1 airfoil family was developed for variable speed operation with pitch control of large megawatt sized rotors. Wind tunnel testing verified the high maximum lift for these airfoils, and the airfoils were found to be very insensitive to leading edge roughness. Performance with vortex generators and Gurney flaps in combination was found to be attractive for the blade root part. Field testing of a 1·5 MW rotor is in progress. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Development of the Risø wind turbine airfoils

The aim of this work is two-sided. Firstly, experimental results obtained for numerous sets of airfoil measurements (mainly intended for wind turbine applications) are collected and compared with computational results from the 2D Navier-Stokes solver EllipSys2D, as well as results from the panel method code XFOIL. Secondly, we are interested in validating the code EllipSys2D and finding out for which air-foils it does not perform well compared to the experiments, as well as why, when it does so. The airfoils are classified according to the agreement between the numerical results and experimental data. A study correlating the available data and this classification is performed. It is found that transition modelling is to a large extent responsible for the poor quality of the computational results for most of the considered airfoils. The transition model mechanism that leads to these discrepancies is identified. Some advices are given for elaborating future airfoil design processes that would involve the numerical code EllipSys2D in particular, and transition modelling in general. (au)

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Wind turbine airfoil catalogue

The theory and results of two experimental methods for estimating the modal damping of a wind turbine during operation are presented. Estimations of the aeroelastic damping of the operational turbine modes (including the effects of the aerodynamic forces) give a quantitative view of the stability characteristics of the turbine. In the first method the estimation of modal damping is based on the assumption that a turbine mode can be excited by a harmonic force at its natural frequency, whereby the decaying response after the end of excitation gives an estimate of the damping. Simulations and experiments show that turbine vibrations related to the first two tower bending modes can be excited by blade pitch and generator torque variations. However, the excited turbine vibrations are not pure modal vibrations and the estimated damping is therefore not the actual modal damping. The second method is based on stochastic subspace identification, where a linear model of the turbine is estimated alone from measured response signals by assuming that the ambient excitation from turbulence is random in time and space. Although the assumption is not satisfied, this operational modal analysis method can handle the deterministic excitation, and the modal frequencies and damping of the first tower and first edgewise whirling modes are extracted. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Peter Fuglsang

Papers

Control design for a pitch-regulated, variable speed wind turbine

Optimization method for wind turbine rotors

Development of the Risø wind turbine airfoils

Wind turbine airfoil catalogue

Two methods for estimating aeroelastic damping of operational wind turbine modes from experiments