Comprehensive Program Research

Micro-reconfigurable wind

farm with cooperative control

Urban wind farm rotor

design and placement

Noise generation/propagation

New sensors for condition monitoring

Wind Energy Systems

Education / Training

Certificate program New hands-on laboratory

course in wind energy

Internships (NREL, etc.)

Research Vision Smart Blade Test

Purdue & Sandia Nat. Lab. Bushland, TX

Smart Wind

Turbines &

Farms that can sense,

predict, and control their own

performance &

reliability

Shape loads on

the rotor for energy and reliability

Rotor-based capacitive

accelerometers for load sensing

Simulation

Based

Models that can help

engineers and owners optimize

wind turbine and

wind farm designs

Siting for noise,

energy capture, and reliability

What is a Smart wind farm?

Can we identify &

exploit interaction?

(If so, then we can

optimize energy

production at

various sites and maximize uptime

by reducing

harmful loads.)

Characterizing Loads

•! Consider an offshore wind farm, where wake

interactions are known to cause losses ~25%.

Milborrow, 2003, Wind Engineering and Industrial Applications

Barthelmie and Jensen, 2010, Wind Energy

Inlet wind

field

Rotor

response data

0 2!

Swept

force

Manage loads

Maintenance

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Wind Turbine Dynamics &

Control Testbed Wind Turbine Test Stand

•!Southwest Windpower® - Whisper

100™ (2.1m diameter) •!"” honeycomb core

•!4 – 48” diameter axial fans

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Data acquisition hardware

•!12V battery pack

•!Gefen® Wireless USB 2.0 transmitter

•!National Instruments® cDAQ

How Do Rotors Respond?

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Yaw Control for Loads

Tweak yaw to

“shape” rotor loads

1% change in power

!

40% change in blade response ((34(

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What Does this Matter?

750 kW gearbox drive train tested

at NREL Wind Technology Center

Modal Characteristics

Must avoid the coupling of the rotor response into

the operation of the drive train

Mode at 31 Hz

Why Blade Sensors?

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Micro Reconfigurable Wind Farm

Objectives:

•! Quantify aerodynamic

interactions between turbines

•! Investigate the effects of

wind farm configuration on

turbine performance &

dynamic response

•! Measure performance and

dynamic response of each

turbine to determine the

influence of operating in

wakes of upstream turbines

Wind Farm Specifications

Wind Turbine Specs

•! Southwest Windpower

Whisper 100 turbine •! 900 W Maximum

Power at 28 mph

•! 7 ft Rotor Diameter

Mounting Cart Specs

•! 34 ft Turbine height

•!7’ x 8’ platform - ~ 1100 lb

•! Casters for repositioning

& jacks for “permanent”

operation

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Wind Farm Instrumentation

Wind Turbine Wake Modeling

Objective: Improve the performance predictions for wind farms

•!Model turbine wakes to improve power predictions

•!Optimize wind farm layouts

Approach: CFD modeling to provide detailed information

•!Wind farm as a system

•!Wind turbine & wakes

Wind Farm: Turbines modeled as surface roughness in

atmospheric boundary layer

Wind Turbine Wake Modeling

Urban Wind Farms

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•! Study VAWTs to better understand performance

and noise in two typical urban environments.

Interdisciplinary

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Land Value

•! Wind Turbine Economics and Values

–! The Contract Defines the Landowner's Economic

Value, i.e. Residual value to land

–! Income and tax stream

–! Decommissioning costs

•! Other Critical "Values”

–! Nuisance - noise, NIMBY, visual

–! Environmental - habitat, wildlife

•! These "Values" extremely difficult to determine, but are

important.

–! Communities often make decisions on perception of

these "Values"

A Step Change in Wind

The single most important

thing we can do at the

university to advance wind

power is to train our students

on relevant projects.

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