ANWIND

Motivation

The origin of ANWIND lies in the continuously increasing rotor diameters of newly installed wind turbines and the resulting load increase under non-uniform wind flow conditions. Cross winds and shear particularly impact these plants, which necessitates intensive research into innovative technologies for wind analysis as well as an up-to-date investigation into new control strategies.

Methods

Through a fundamental theoretical investigation into the wind field, application specific models are developed that allow an improved representation of wind field characteristics and dynamics. The models are afterwards verified in three measuring campaigns integrated into the project.

Parallelly, innovative measuring systems and methods are developed. By designing and testing a nacelle based lidar sensor system and novel UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) sensor networks, the wind field in front of the turbine is captured at high resolution both spatially and temporally. This enables preventive turbine controls and detailed analyses of turbine sites. Fiber optical sensors are utilized to measure rotor blade deflection and capture the wind field within the rotor area. The combined results from all employed measuring systems allow for in-depth comparisons and analyses of the connection between wind field and turbine reaction.

Based on thorough evaluations of the gathered data, the correlation between wind conditions and variances in plant specific parameters, like noise emissions or a plant’s power curve, is investigated.

Furthermore, the high-resolution measuring systems and extensive measuring campaigns of the ANWIND project, provide a foundation for the development and testing of diverse control and pilot control concepts. By utilizing newly developed measuring sensors, the operational management of wind turbines can be optimized.