Expert Elicitation on Wind Farm Control

Wind farm control is an active and growing field of research in which the control actions of individual turbines in a farm are coordinated, accounting for inter-turbine aerodynamic interaction, to improve the overall performance of the wind farm and to reduce costs. The primary objectives of wind farm control include increasing power production, reducing turbine loads, and providing electricity grid support services. Additional objectives include improving reliability or reducing external impacts to the environment and communities. In 2019, a European research project (FarmConners) was started with the main goal of providing an overview of the state-of-the-art in wind farm control, identifying consensus of research findings, data sets, and best practices, providing a summary of the main research challenges, and establishing a roadmap on how to address these challenges. Complementary to the FarmConners project, an IEA Wind Topical Expert Meeting (TEM) and two rounds of surveys among experts were performed. From these events we can clearly identify an interest in more public validation campaigns. Additionally, a deeper understanding of the mechanical loads and the uncertainties concerning the effectiveness of wind farm control are considered two major research gaps

A control-oriented dynamic wind farm model: WFSim

Wind turbines are often sited together in wind farms as it is economically advantageous. Controlling the flow within wind farms to reduce the fatigue loads, maximize energy production and provide ancillary services is a challenging control problem due to the underlying time-varying non-linear wake dynamics. In this paper, we present a control-oriented dynamical wind farm model called the WindFarmSimulator (WFSim) that can be used in closed-loop wind farm control algorithms. The three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations were the starting point for deriving the control-oriented dynamic wind farm model. Then, in order to reduce computational complexity, terms involving the vertical dimension were either neglected or estimated in order to partially compensate for neglecting the vertical dimension. Sparsity of and structure in the system matrices make this model relatively computationally inexpensive. We showed that by taking the vertical dimension partially into account, the estimation of flow data generated with a high-fidelity wind farm model is improved relative to when the vertical dimension is completely neglected in WFSim. Moreover, we showed that, for the study cases considered in this work, WFSim is potentially fast enough to be used in an online closed-loop control framework including model parameter updates. Finally we showed that the proposed wind farm model is able to estimate flow and power signals generated by two different 3-D high-fidelity wind farm models

In COVID-19 health messaging, loss framing increases anxiety with little-to-no concomitant benefits: Experimental evidence from 84 countries

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g., “If you do not practice these steps, you can endanger yourself and others”) or potential gains (e.g., “If you practice these steps, you can protect yourself and others”)? Collecting data in 48 languages from 15,929 participants in 84 countries, we experimentally tested the effects of message framing on COVID-19-related judgments, intentions, and feelings. Loss- (vs. gain-) framed messages increased self-reported anxiety among participants cross-nationally with little-to-no impact on policy attitudes, behavioral intentions, or information seeking relevant to pandemic risks. These results were consistent across 84 countries, three variations of the message framing wording, and 560 data processing and analytic choices. Thus, results provide an empirical answer to a global communication question and highlight the emotional toll of loss-framed messages. Critically, this work demonstrates the importance of considering unintended affective consequences when evaluating nudge-style interventions