The Carbon Trust to Launch Wind Farm Control Trials Project

The Carbon Trust has announced Wind Farm Control Trials (WFCT), a new project designed to demonstrate how effective implementation of control strategies can reduce the cost of offshore wind.

The WFCT, a part of the Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) programme, will investigate the impact of focusing on strategies that aim to improve energy generation across an entire wind farm rather than individual turbines.

The EUR 2.3 million project is supported by EnBW, E.ON, innogy, Statoil and Vattenfall incorporating know-how from DTU, ECN, Frazer-Nash Consultancy and Windar Photonics.

According to The Carbon Trust, optimising control strategies to reduce wake effects will lower the levelised cost of energy (LCoE) by increasing the total wind energy yield and reducing fatigue, thus saving operational and maintenance costs. Additionally, the introduction of control strategies can also increase availability and extend the lifetime of existing and future assets.

During the project, different methods of control will be used to optimise power production for the whole wind farm rather than maximising production of individual turbines, while the turbine control will be altered by adjusting the blade angle of attack (pitch) and rotation of the nacelle (yaw).

The WFCT study will be the largest and most comprehensive real-life demonstration of the impact of Wind Farm Control (WFC) strategies on the overall performance of a wind farm, The Carbon Trust said. The project aims to build on previous simulation-based studies, expecting that adopting blade pitch or yaw-based WFC strategies would result in increase in energy yield of between 0.5 and 3.5 percent. It is also expected to possibly enable load reductions of up to 50 percent for some wind turbine components meaning increased component life therefore reduced operation and maintenance costs.

The project will seek to verify and validate these theories by implementing WFC strategies at an operational wind farm. The first stage involves analysis to determine the most suitable wind farm test site for the trials and an optimisation of the control strategies. The selected wind farm will have extensive measurement equipment installed as part of the validation process for the simulations, including eight nacelle mounted Windar Photonics LiDARs, a scanning LiDAR and load measurements installed on individual turbines, The Carbon Trust said.

The Carbon Trust emphasises that despite evidence showing the potential benefits of this technology exists, technical and economic risks pose a challenge for bringing it to market. The OWA WFCT project has been set up with the aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of WFC strategies in an operational setting, and once proven, the concept can be rolled out to operational offshore wind farms across the wider industry.

The trials are expected to be undertaken in 2018, with full results expected in 2019.