Posters

Abstract

Increasing numbers of onshore wind farm assets are beginning to reach the end of their design life or are operating beyond their warranty period. This has driven recent interest in methods of assessing the viability of continuing to operate wind farms beyond their planned lifetime or using bespoke upgrades and controller settings in order to optimise operations for owners objectives. Understanding the condition of assets and the impact of extended or changed operations is a safety critical requirement for owners. Key barriers to life extension and control optimisation are the lack of access to an aero-elastic model of specific turbines due to original equipment manufacturer’s (OEM’s) desire to protect their intellectual property (IP), an updated understanding of the site climate and associated turbine loads data. The life extension calculation process compares the fatigue loads that were predicted at the design phase to be experienced by a turbine from a site in question to those actually experienced during operation. To achieve this analysis the quality of the environmental condition data and the accuracy of turbine models is critical. While operational measurement of climatic conditions and turbine loading can be achieved through the use of independent flow measurement devices and deploying load measurements on turbines, these activities carry a cost which may render upgrades or life extension uneconomical. Therefore, there is a need to establish a cost-effective methodology that utilises targeted instrumentation and measurements combined with representative aero-elastic models to enable lifetime optimisation of wind farms.