Integrated Research Programme on Wind Energy : Offshore array control Work Package 6.3 - Deliverable number 63.4

Giles, Alexander and van der Hoek, Daan and Bedon, Gabriele and Merz, Karl and Kühn, Martin and Vali, Mehdi and Anaya-Lara, Olimpo and Kanev, Stoyan and Petrović, Vlaho and Trabucchi, Davide and Leithead, William (2018) Integrated Research Programme on Wind Energy : Offshore array control Work Package 6.3 - Deliverable number 63.4. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. (https://doi.org/10.17868/77125)

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Abstract

With focus turning to the development of offshore wind farms to exploit the favourable wind resource, the control of such plants becomes of upmost importance, such that the projects remain as economically efficient as possible. The economic viability of an offshore wind farm is influenced by how effectively the wind farm can harvest energy, how the wind farm can operate in a manner amenable to a transmission system operator, and the level of mechanical loading to which the wind turbines are subjected. In this work package, the University of Strathclyde developed a simulation tool, StrathFarm, for assessing the performance of wind farm controllers. Included in StrathFarm are state-of-the-art wind turbine control systems, turbine models and wind field models whose predictive capabilities have been demonstrated through comparisons with commercial software. With StrathFarm, it is possible to simulate the performance of a wind farm comprising one hundred turbines in real time on a standard desktop PC. With StrathFarm, the University of Strathclyde have developed a control solution which demonstrates how a wind farm can provide ancillary services to a power system. Of particular importance is that this has been demonstrated when the wind is turbulent, a key detail which has often been ignored in previous work. While this was only demonstrated with a small wind farm comprising ten wind turbines in a regular layout, it should be noted that StrathFarm is sufficiently flexible for wind farm layouts such as the NORCOWE reference wind farm to be investigated. Similarly, while StrathFarm used Supergen wind turbine models, with appropriate lookup tables and knowledge of some physical properties, other wind turbines such as the DTU 10MW reference wind turbine could be simulated. A second deliverable of this work package, to evaluate the effectiveness of control systems in increasing energy capture, was successfully undertaken by ECN. Using the patented ECN Active Wake Control Approach, it was shown that the wind farm energy capture could be increased by up to 2.77%, with the exact gains depending on factors such as turbulence intensity. The annual energy capture gain, factoring in changing wind direction and speed, was estimated to be 0.36%. Research at the University of Oldenburg involved the development of a wind farm control system in which the 2D Navier-Stokes equations are embedded, with the resulting controller being used to achieve power maximization, active power control and coordinated load distribution.

ORCID iDs

Giles, Alexander ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0165-4810, van der Hoek, Daan, Bedon, Gabriele, Merz, Karl, Kühn, Martin, Vali, Mehdi, Anaya-Lara, Olimpo ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5250-5877, Kanev, Stoyan, Petrović, Vlaho, Trabucchi, Davide and Leithead, William;