Inflow Parameter Effects on Wind Turbine Tower Cyclic Loading

Wind turbine towers are fatigue-critical structures subjected to a variety of atmospheric wind regimes at onshore installations. At a commercial wind farm in Southwestern Ontario, the structural steel supporting tower of a multi-megawatt horizontal-axis turbine has been instrumented with a fiber Bragg grating strain gauge array. A nearby meteorological mast allows wind conditions to be classified on the basis of horizontal turbulence intensity and vertical wind shear. Data has been collected over a measurement campaign spanning multiple months, and a sample of the towerstate SAs cyclic loading history has been compiled. Comparisons are drawn between accumulated hourly loading cycle spectra for operation across different upwind inflow parameters

Turbine Power Production Sensitivity to Coastal Sheared and Turbulent Inflows

Inflows with identical wind speeds at turbine hub height can generate varying amounts of power, depending on parameters such as vertical shear and turbulence intensity. At a commercial wind farm located in Southwestern Ontario off the shores of Lake Erie, the wind profile approaching a multi-megawatt horizontal-axis turbine has been characterized by a meteorological mast and then correlated with resulting power production across a range of hub height speeds. Using data collected over a six-month measurement campaign, inferences have been drawn on the sensitivity of turbine performance to sheared and turbulent inflows for both land and lake-influenced winds at the coastal site under study