On the Control of Downstream Wind Turbines using the Helix Approach: A Wake Synchronization Method

The placement of wind turbines in wind farms is economically beneficial to the industry. Consequently, the wake generated by the upstream turbines introduces interactions with downstream turbines that significantly affect power generation. However, it is common practice to control the individual turbines to operate at their optimal settings and...

On the Load Impact of the Helix Approach on Offshore Wind Turbines: Quantifying and analyzing the fatigue load impact of the helix approach on offshore wind turbine components.

To accelerate the growth of offshore wind power, its Levelised Cost Of Energy (LCOE) must be reduced. A means of reducing the LCOE of offshore wind power is by mitigating the adverse wake effect by employing Wind Farm Control (WFC) for power maximization. A recent WFC technology is the helix approach, which uses Individual Pitch Control (IPC) to...

On the load impact of dynamic wind farm wake mixing strategies

In recent studies, the effectiveness of different so-called wake mixing strategies has been assessed in terms of wind farm power maximization. These studies show that by dynamically varying the pitch angles of a wind turbine, wake mixing can be enhanced to increase the overall power production of a wind farm. However, such strategies also...

Adjoint optimisation for wind farm flow control with a free-vortex wake model

Wind farm flow control aims to improve wind turbine performance by reducing aerodynamic wake interaction between turbines. Dynamic, physics-based models of wind farm flows have been essential for exploring control strategies such as wake redirection and dynamic induction control. Free-vortex methods can provide a computationally efficient way...

Pitch control for wind turbine load mitigation and enhanced wake mixing: A simulation and experimental validation study

The dissertation discusses different wind turbine control strategies that use pitch actuation to decrease the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) of wind farms. This is achieved by either mitigating the loads experienced by individual turbines, or by enhancing wake mixing in turbines located within a wind farm. The latter strategy exploits the fact...

The helix approach: Using dynamic individual pitch control to enhance wake mixing in wind farms

Wind farm control using dynamic concepts is a research topic that is receiving an increasing amount of interest. The main concept of this approach is that dynamic variations of the wind turbine control settings lead to higher wake turbulence, and subsequently faster wake recovery due to increased mixing. As a result, downstream turbines...

On the Turbulent Mixing in Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine Wakes

The wake flow of a horizontal axis wind turbine is characterised by lower wind speed and higher turbulence than the free-stream conditions. When clustered in large wind farms, wind turbines regularly operate inside the wake of one or more upstream machines. This is a major cause of energy production loss and a source of higher fatigue loads on...