Optimisation of Floating Offshore Wind Substructures: A Higher-Fidelity Approach

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) unlock the potential to harness energy from wind in deeper waters. Despite their potential, the major obstacle to large-scale commercial deployment remains the floating substructure's high cost. Multidisciplinary design, analysis and optimisation techniques are commonly employed to improve their cost...

Semi-centralised hydrogen production: A techno-economic analysis of offshore wind-to-hydrogen configurations

The escalating demand for green hydrogen as a sustainable energy carrier has sparked significant interest in offshore wind-to-hydrogen systems, which hold the promise of expediting the transition towards renewable energy sources. The objective of this research is to provide insight in the techno-economic feasibility of semi-centralised...

Inertial and Frequency Response of an Offshore Wind Turbine: Effect on Extreme and Fatigue Loads

The replacement of conventional generation units with variable renewable energy sources could have a negative impact on the balance of supply and demand of electricity. Moreover, since the variable renewable energy sources are inverter based and therefore decoupled from the grid, the overall grid inertia will decrease. To solve this problem, the...

The Impact of Wind Shear and Turbulence on the Loads and Performance of Wind Turbines

Operating in real-world conditions, modern large capacity wind turbines often experience off-design situations, enduring dynamic loads characterized by complex unsteady aerodynamics. Key among the challenges in predicting these dynamic loads is understanding the effects of wind shear and turbulence, both individually and in their complex...

Centralised offshore hydrogen production: Techno-economic optimisation and assessment of the benefit of aggregated power supply

Green hydrogen is expected to play a crucial role in the energy transition as it can be utilised for both storage purposes and as fuel for hard-to-abate sectors. One of the possible configurations for producing green hydrogen is by means of a central offshore hydrogen production platform powered by offshore wind energy. Producing hydrogen...

The impact of power management strategies and module sizing for offshore wind turbine integrated electrolysis

Solar and wind will displace fossil fuels as the main source of energy in a net-zero world. However, renewable energy sources provide intermittent power, hence an energy carrier that enables the balancing of demand and supply is needed. Here green hydrogen comes in place. <br/>In addition, the demand for green hydrogen is expected to rise in the...

Vertical Axis Wind Turbine Optimization for Ship Propulsion: using a free wake vortex model

The global emission of harmful greenhouse gasses has to be reduced. Commercial shipping contributes to these emissions by using fossil fuel as the only energy source to provide propulsion and power auxiliary systems. In order to reduce fuel consumption, much research is focused on increasing the efficiency of the propulsion system and reducing...

Investigation into hydrogen production, storage and transport: From far offshore floating wind farms

Offshore wind farms designed solely for hydrogen production are promising solutions for maximizing wind energy conversion, decarbonizing industries that cannot directly utilize electricity, and reducing the need for additional grid reinforcements. Furthermore, floating offshore wind turbines enable the capture of wind resources in deeper waters....

Aerodynamics of a 15-MW and a 5-MW Reference Wind Turbine Using Varying Fidelity Tools

The most effective way to decrease the cost of energy of wind turbines is to increase the rotor diameter. Therefore, this calls for the need of aerodynamic research on large wind turbines. This thesis project will tackle the topics addressed by the IEA Wind Task 47 which is focused on the aerodynamic analysis and comparison of the newly proposed...

Offshore Wind Farm Layout Optimisation: To provide insight in what can be expected from offshore wind farm layout optimisation

The potential gain in energy production and profit by improving the placements of turbines within a wind farm is driving interest. However, finding the optimal placements provides a complex problem. A large number of inter-dependent design variables create a design space that is difficult to solve. Therefore there is much attention for offshore...

Reducing production cost in offshore wind turbine tower design

The objective of the thesis was to evaluate the cost reductions and tower design when production costs are included in the design process of an offshore wind turbine tower. First, a tower cost model had to be developed. Then, based on the findings, a cost optimization model was built with the tower design software from Siemens Gamesa Renewable...

Providing Stacked Balancing Services using Wind-Storage systems

In order to decarbonize the electricity grid, renewable energy sources must be utilised in con- junction with energy storage to provide ancillary services, which maintain electricity supply quality, reliability and restorability, whilst remaining aordable. Due to a lack of knowledge about the potential of stacking UK ancillary services and...

Simulation of a Wind Powered Freshwater and Electricity Production System: Numerical Modeling and Optimization

The rapid growth in world population and increasing demands have led to the lack of fresh water, taking a toll on several of earths reserves, mainly the fresh water supply reserves. Water stress deters economic growth, leads to conflicts and has a direct impact on the health of humans. Studies show the trends in the<br/>increase of water...

Robust energy production optimization of a wind farm using wake steering by calibrating the FLORIS model on SCADA data

Wind farms experience significant efficiency losses due to the aerodynamic interaction between turbines. A possible control technique to reduce these losses to a minimum is yaw-based wake steering. This thesis investigates the feasibility of this technique by calibrating a surrogate model called the FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady-state...

Wind Turbine Design for a Hybrid System: with the emphasis on generation complementarity

The global issue on global warming leads nations to reduce their carbon emission, and one way to do it is by decarbonising the power system and employing higher penetration of renewable energy technology. However, due to the variable nature of renewable energy, their integration to the power system poses challenges to the utilities and system...

Arcadian Renewable Energy System: Renewable Energy for Mars Habitat

The human eye has turned itself back to the sky with the commercialisation of the space industry, and a new goal has been set. Setting foot on the Red Planet is the next stage of the human exploration of the universe. The travel to Mars is very lengthy and costly, nonetheless the planet still shows great potential for sustaining human life. To...