Flipping the Script On Traditional Wind Turbine Technologies

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NREL Wind Researchers Undertake Sweeping Validation Examine of a Downwind Turbine

Most wind generators face the wind—and there’s a good cause for that. Because the Eighties, wind turbine builders have been utilizing what is named the “Danish concept” for his or her designs—three blades, positioned upwind (i.e., going through the wind), which might be engineered to maintain going through the wind to maximise power manufacturing.

This spring, a bunch of Nationwide Renewable Power Laboratory (NREL) researchers, in partnership with the Technical College of Denmark (DTU), sought to problem the Danish idea by answering the query: What occurs after we flip wind turbine blades round?

“There has been for decades this ongoing discussion in the research community about whether turbines should all be upwind,” mentioned NREL wind power researcher (and undertaking lead) Pietro Bortolotti. “The turbines we started with in the 1980s, when this standard was set, were very different than what we deploy today. They were much smaller and had chunkier blades, chunkier towers.”

The aim of a latest experiment was to supply exhausting information about whether or not the upwind paradigm continues to be legitimate.

On the Flip Facet

To finish the experiment, NREL and DTU researchers actually flipped the rotor of a 1.5-megawatt analysis wind turbine that lives on NREL’s Flatirons Campus in Colorado—together with the wind vane and nacelle (which homes the gearbox) atop the tower. They then rewired the generator to spin the opposite manner. “Plus, a million other things we had to do to make sure we were not going to break anything,” Bortolotti mentioned.

After technicians spent days and nights atop aerial platforms to make the transition, attaching strain belts and putting in microphones at numerous distances from the wind turbine, the staff was capable of begin capturing information.

“We conducted this experiment for two reasons: to study the techno-economic feasibility of downwind turbines and to utilize this very new instrumentation from DTU that can measure the performance of pressure distributions on a turbine blade,” Bortolotti mentioned.

Bortolotti was supported by quite a few different wind power researchers and technicians, together with Jason Roadman, Mark Iverson, Chris Ivanov, Jon Keller, and Derek Slaughter, who labored collectively to make the bodily transition and monitor the outcomes.

A Techno-Financial Evaluation To Reply Many years-Previous Questions

The experiment is likely one of the closing tasks being undertaken by way of the Big Adaptive Rotor (BAR) projectfunded by the U.S. Division of Power’s Wind Power Applied sciences Workplace. The aim of BAR is to assist the event of land-based wind turbine applied sciences and determine methods to cut back prices, particularly associated to creating lighter-weight blades with elevated flexibility.

“We looked at a whole spectrum of possible candidates,” Bortolotti mentioned. “And we wanted to investigate whether going downwind was an opportunity to further increase flexibility and decrease costs.”

At first look, just a few features of the downwind state of affairs appear promising. First, the blades in a downwind turbine are naturally pushed away from the tower by the wind, so there is a chance to design lighter and extra versatile blades that don’t have to be stiff sufficient to avoid the tower. And the lighter the blade, the inexpensive they’re to make.

Second, the lean of the wind turbine’s rotor redirects the turbine’s wake towards the bottom, so it’s much less prone to intrude with different generators in a farm. And a few research present that downwind rotors improve the facility efficiency of enormous wind farms.

However there may be one main concern that comes together with the downwind state of affairs. The truth that, when a blade passes behind the tower, it’s, for a cut up second, sheltered from the wind. This adjustments the strain on the blade, producing an oscillation, or fluctuation, that causes fatigue on the blade itself and generates an audible “thump.” And that thump occurs each time one of many blades passes behind the tower—in different phrases, usually.

Over the course of 11 hours of knowledge assortment, the staff did certainly seize the thump, at audible-enough ranges that would impression communities inside earshot.

Blades Beneath Strain

The oscillation didn’t simply generate a noticeable sound. It additionally generated strain on the wind turbine—strain that, through the experiment, was measured through three particular belts that researchers from DTU affixed to one of many blades and the turbine tower.

“The belts are very new instrumentation that DTU has been working on,” mentioned Bortolotti, who added that the belt gadgets can assist researchers decide the efficiency of the rotor, whether or not it’s upwind or downwind. “We used this experiment to help DTU push ahead this technology, because it’s a very valuable and unique device that we hope to be using again in the future for upwind rotors.”

Throughout the experiment, the belts measured the strain distribution alongside the rotor rotation, giving the staff a exact have a look at the impact of the behind-the-tower oscillation on the blade. These measurements will assist present key insights into the elevated fatigue loading skilled by downwind rotors.

One different key advantage of utilizing the belts within the research was the info they produced. These information can present real-world validation of aeroelastic numerical fashions the staff developed with NREL’s OpenFAST device.

“At NREL, we develop a lot of tools for the numerical prediction of loads, performance of wind turbines, wind farms, and so on,” mentioned Bortolotti, who added that gadgets just like the strain belts are essential for validating these numerical instruments.

The staff plans to make use of the strain belts in future experiments on extra standard rotors. “Thanks to the BAR project, we are now confident that the belts are a viable way to generate valuable experimental datasets that will help us improve our understanding of wind turbines,” Bortolotti mentioned.

Drawing Conclusions

Whereas the formal outcomes of the research is not going to be printed till later in 2024, the preliminary outcomes are sufficient to conclude that the potential advantages of downwind operations don’t outweigh the drawbacks.

Bortolotti factors out that the staff knew that whereas the noise and blade fatigue issues had been current with downwind land-based generators, the impression was unclear.

“The research community had to rely on datasets from the 1980s and anecdotal evidence, which in science are not sufficient,” Bortolotti mentioned. “We can now confidently say that the next generation of land-based wind turbines will be larger and more flexible, but the Danish concept will continue to be the dominant technology.”

In the end, the experiment was a significant accomplishment—and never only for the truth that it collected very important information on the efficiency of a utility-scale downwind turbine whereas validating modeling and simulation instruments.

“We did something that nobody thought that we could do, which was to spin a fairly big wind turbine outfitted with a large set of instrumentation that recorded a broad spectrum of aeroacoustics, loads, and pressure data,” Bortolotti mentioned. “This 1.5-megawatt turbine is small compared to modern installations, but still, it’s a big beast, and spinning it downwind safely without breaking a single bolt was a big achievement.”

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By Tiffany Plate. Courtesy of NREL.