Gareth Brown

The Role of the Owner in Quality Assurance and Control focuses on how owners and operators can maximize long-term value of a wind project through the execution and management of a quality program. Whether the quality program is administered through a turbine manufacturer, a service provider, or otherwise, it is the responsibility of the owner to ensure that the quality program is executed successfully.

Wind Farm Performance Management

The site conditions specified in the current draft of IEC 61400-1 present design values and limits that are statistical averages of measured features of the inflow conditions. Unfortunately, loading conditions do not always scale linearly with wind shear, turbulence, or wind speed. The incorporation of the 90th percentile of turbulence in the design conditions listed in the standards accommodates for this fact to some extent. To effectively assess the actual loading conditions at a site, the… Show more

The site conditions specified in the current draft of IEC 61400-1 present design values and limits that are statistical averages of measured features of the inflow conditions. Unfortunately, loading conditions do not always scale linearly with wind shear, turbulence, or wind speed. The incorporation of the 90th percentile of turbulence in the design conditions listed in the standards accommodates for this fact to some extent. To effectively assess the actual loading conditions at a site, the distributions of wind shear as a function of wind speed must be measured and assessed by the WTG manufacturer. This presentation draws on a database of North American wind regime assessments at failing or struggling operating assets and compares the loading conditions as predicted by the site condition parameters identified in the standards and by the measured distributions of the aforementioned features of the site conditions. Suggestions are made such that the industry's assessment of project risk in preconstruction projects can be improved. Show less

Wind farm (known or unknown) lost yield can be caused by a variety of factors such as higher than anticipated wake losses due to poor modelling or stable atmospheres, higher topographic or roughness effects, yaw misalignment errors, commissioning setup errors, blade aerodynamic degradation, control inefficiencies, poor optimisation of the WTG and wind farm operation.
This talk will discuss how these issues can be managed in a holistic approach to boast wind farm performance. Real world… Show more

Wind farm (known or unknown) lost yield can be caused by a variety of factors such as higher than anticipated wake losses due to poor modelling or stable atmospheres, higher topographic or roughness effects, yaw misalignment errors, commissioning setup errors, blade aerodynamic degradation, control inefficiencies, poor optimisation of the WTG and wind farm operation.
This talk will discuss how these issues can be managed in a holistic approach to boast wind farm performance. Real world highlights will be discussed to emphasize where sizeable gains can be made to capture the lost yield.
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The 3D wind and turbulence characteristics of the atmospheric boundary layer experiment (3D Wind) was conducted to evaluate innovative remote sensing and in situ platforms for measurements of wind and turbulence regimes. The experiment is part of a planned series that focuses on quantifying wind and turbulence characteristics at the scales of modern wind turbines and wind farms and was conducted in northern Indiana in May 2012. 3D Wind had the following specific objectives: (i) intercomparison… Show more

The 3D wind and turbulence characteristics of the atmospheric boundary layer experiment (3D Wind) was conducted to evaluate innovative remote sensing and in situ platforms for measurements of wind and turbulence regimes. The experiment is part of a planned series that focuses on quantifying wind and turbulence characteristics at the scales of modern wind turbines and wind farms and was conducted in northern Indiana in May 2012. 3D Wind had the following specific objectives: (i) intercomparison experiments evaluating wind speed profiles across the wind turbine rotor plane from traditional cup anemometers and wind vanes on a meteorological mast and from a tethered balloon, sonic anemometers (mast mounted and on an unmanned aerial vehicle), three vertical-pointing (continuous wave) lidars and a pulsed scanning lidar, and (ii) integrate these measurements and output from 3-km-resolution (over the inner domain) simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting Model to develop a detailed depiction of the atmospheric flow, upwind, within, and downwind of a large, irregularly spaced wind farm. This paper provides an overview of the measurement techniques, their advantages and disadvantages focusing on the integration of wind and turbulence characteristics that are necessary for wind farm development and operation. Analyses of the measurements are summarized to characterize instrument cross comparison, wind profiles, and spatial gradients and wind turbine wakes. Show less