This thesis investigates the computation of invariance kernels for planar nonlinear systems with one input, with application to wind turbine stability. Given a known bound on the absolute value of the input variations (possibly around a fixed non-zero value), it is of interest to determine if the system's state can be guaranteed to stay within a desired region K of the state space irrespective of the input variations. The collection of all initial conditions for which trajectories will never exit K irrespective of input variations is called the invariance kernel. This thesis develops theory to characterize the boundary of the invariance kernel and develops an algorithm to compute the exact boundary of the invariance kernel. The algorithm is applied to two simplified wind turbine systems that tap kinetic energy of the turbine to support the frequency of the grid. One system provides power smoothing, and the other provides inertial response. For these models, limits on speed and torque specify a desired region of operation K in the state space, while the wind is represented as a bounded input. The theory developed in the thesis makes it possible to define a measure called the wind disturbance margin. This measure quantifies the largest range of wind variations under which the specified type of grid support may be provided. The wind disturbance margin quantifies how the exploitation of kinetic energy reduces a turbine's tolerance to wind disturbances. The improvement in power smoothing and inertial response made available by the increased speed range of a full converter-interfaced turbine is quantified as an example.

Experimental aeroacoustic research was conducted on a wind turbine specific airfoil at low Reynolds numbers. The goal of this thesis was to study trailing edge noise generation from the airfoil and investigate correlations between the noise and the flow field. Before experiments were performed the current wind tunnel had to be modified in order to make it more suitable for aeroacoustic tests. Sound absorbing foam was added to the inside of the tunnel to lower the background noise levels and turbulence reduction screens were added which lowered the turbulence. An S822 airfoil was chosen because it is designed for low Reynolds flows attainable in the wind tunnel which are on the order of 104. Smoke wire flow visualization was used to gain insight into the airfoil wake development and oil film flow visualization was used to qualitatively assess the boundary layer development. Laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) was used to measure two components of velocity at high data rates in the airfoil wake. Wake profiles were measured in addition to single point measurements to determine the velocity spectrum. A microphone was mounted inside the test section in order to measure the trailing edge noise. Initial plans included measuring the trailing edge noise with a microphone array capable of quantifying and locating noise sources. Although an array was built and beamforming code was written it was only used in preliminary monopole source tests. Oil film results showed the behaviour of the boundary layer to be consistent with previous low Reynolds number experiments. LDA results revealed sharp peaks in the velocity spectra at 1100 Hz from U0 = 15–24 m/s, and 3100 and 3800 Hz, from U0 = 25–35 m/s, which were inconsistent with vortex shedding results of previous researchers. Also present were a series of broad peaks in the spectra that increase from 1200–1700 Hz in the U0 = 25–35 m/s range. The shedding frequency from the smoke wire flow visualization was calculated to be 1250 Hz at U0 = 26 m/s. These sharp peaks were also present in the acoustic spectrum. It was reasoned that these peaks are due to wind tunnel resonance which is a common occurrence in hard wall wind tunnels. In particular the tone at 1100 Hz is due to a standing wave with a wavelength equal to half the tunnel width. The shedding frequency from the smoke wire flow visualization was calculated to be 1100 Hz at U0 = 20 m/s. These tones exhibited a “ladder-like” relationship with freestream velocity, another aspect indicative of wind tunnel resonance. It was reasoned that the wind tunnel resonance was forcing the shedding frequency of the airfoil in the U0 = 15–24 m/s range, and in the U0 = 25–35 m/s range, the shedding frequency corresponded to the broad peaks in the LDA spectra.

The majority of present-day horizontal axis wind turbine blade tips are simple designs based on historical trends. There is, however, some evidence that varying the design of the tip can result in significant changes in performance characteristics such as power output, noise, and structural loading. Very few studies have tested this idea on an actual rotating blade and there is much to be investigated. Thus, a project was devised to examine experimentally the effect of various tip designs on an operational rotating wind turbine rotor. A tapered, twisted blade 1.6 m in length was custom designed for use in the UW Wind Energy Research Facility using the blade element momentum (BEM) method. A coupling mechanism was designed such that the outer 10% of each blade could be exchanged to evaluate the effect of different tip designs. A set of three blades was fabricated out of fibre-reinforced plastic, while the tips were machined out of maple wood on a CNC milling machine. The blade was evaluated with a standard rectangular tip to establish baseline performance against which to compare the alternative tip configurations. The three-bladed rotor was tested at shaft speeds from 100 rpm to 240 rpm in wind speeds up to the facility maximum of 11.1 m/s. The rotor was found to have a maximum power coefficient of 0.42 at a tip speed ratio of 5.3 and a 1.45 kW rated power at a wind speed of 11 m/s. The performance was compared to predictions made using the BEM method with airfoil data generated using a modified Viterna method and the Aerodas method. While the Aerodas data was capable of predicting the power fairly accurately from 5 m/s to 10 m/s, the modified Viterna method predicted the entire curve much more accurately. Two winglet designs were also tested. The first (called Maniaci) was designed by David Maniaci of Pennsylvania State University and the other (called Gertz) was designed by the author. Both winglets were found to augment the power by roughly 5% at wind speeds between 6.5 m/s and 9.5 m/s, while performance was decreased above and below this speed range. It was calculated that the annual energy production could be increased using the Maniaci and Gertz winglets by 2.3% and 3%, respectively. Considering the preliminary nature of the study the results are encouraging and it is likely that more optimal winglet designs could be designed and evaluated using the same method. More generally, this study proved that the blades with interchangeable tips are capable of being used as an evaluation testbed for alternative wind turbine blade tip designs.

iv Performance prediction of HAWTs is important because it gives an idea about the power production of a HAWT in out of design conditions without making any experiments. Since the experiments of fluid mechanics are difficult to afford, developing some models is very beneficial. There are some models developed about this subject using miscellaneous methods. In this study, one can find &ldquo / Vortex Theory&rdquo / among one of these theories. Some basic 3D aerodynamics was discussed in order to make the reader to understand the main subject of this study. Just after that, performance prediction of constant speed, stall controlled HAWTs was discussed. In order to understand the closeness of this theory to experiments, as a sample, NREL &ldquo / Combined Experiment Rotor&rdquo / was considered. Performances obtained by AEROPOWER, written in Visual Basic 6.0 and Excel combination, and experimental results were compared for different wind velocities. Acceptable results were obtained for wind speeds not much different than the design wind speed. For relatively lower wind speeds, due to &ldquo / turbulence&rdquo / , and for relatively higher wind speeds, due to &ldquo / stall&rdquo / , the program did not give good results. In the first case it has not given any numerical result. Power curves were obtained by only changing the settling angle, and only changing the rotor angular speed using AEROPOWER. It was seen that, both settling angle and rotor rpm values influence the turbine power output significantly.

Designing horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT) blades to achieve satisfactory levels of performance starts with knowledge of the aerodynamic forces acting on the blades. In this thesis, HAWT blade design is studied from the aspect of aerodynamic view and the basic principles of the aerodynamic behaviors of HAWTs are investigated. Blade-element momentum theory (BEM) known as also strip theory, which is the current mainstay of aerodynamic design and analysis of HAWT blades, is used for HAWT blade design in this thesis. Firstly, blade design procedure for an optimum rotor according to BEM theory is performed. Then designed blade shape is modified such that modified blade will be lightly loaded regarding the highly loaded of the designed blade and power prediction of modified blade is analyzed. When the designed blade shape is modified, it is seen that the power extracted from the wind is reduced about 10% and the length of modified blade is increased about 5% for the same required power. BLADESIGN which is a user-interface computer program for HAWT blade design is written. It gives blade geometry parameters (chord-length and twist distributions) and design conditions (design tip-speed ratio, design power coefficient and rotor diameter) for the following inputs / power required from a turbine, number of blades, design wind velocity and blade profile type (airfoil type). The program can be used by anyone who may not be intimately concerned with the concepts of blade design procedure and the results taken from the program can be used for further studies.

The increased interest in the offshore wind resource in both industry and academic and the extension of the wind field where offshore wind turbine can be deployed has stimulated quite a number of offshore wind turbines concepts. This thesis presents a design of mono-column platform supported for 5 MW baseline wind turbine developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), with a single tether anchored to the seabed. The design, based on the pioneer concept SWAY, results from parametric optimized design processes which account for important design considerations in the static and dynamic view, such as the stability, natural frequency, performance requirements as well as the economic feasibility. Fully coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic model is established in the time-domain simulation tool FAST (Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence) with the hydrodynamic coefficients from HydroGen, an indoor program providing same outputs as the commercial software WAMIT. The optimized model is verified by imitating the frequency-domain approach in FAST and thus comparing the results with the frequency-domain calculations. A number of simulations with various wind and wave conditions are run to explore the effect of wind speed and wave significant height in various water depths. By modifying the optimized model to a downwind turbine with the nacelle rigidly mounted on the tower and the single tether connected to the platform by a subsea swivel, the modified models are more closed to the original SWAY-concept wind turbine. These models are compared based on the platform motion, tether tension, displacement, nacelle velocity and acceleration, resonant behavior as well as the damping of the coupled systems. The results of these comparisons prove the advantage of the modified model in performance. The modified model has also clarified itself a good candidate for deep water deployment.

La forte et rapide croissance de l’énergie éolienne à travers le monde a nécessité la mise en vigueur de nouveaux critères normalisés permettant de l’intégrer dans les réseaux électriques sans affecter la qualité et la stabilité du système, et qui peuvent demander aux éoliennes de participer au réglage de la fréquence dans les réseaux en cas de besoin. Ainsi, les travaux présentés dans cette thèse visent à proposer une solution de loi de commande qui permette aux éoliennes de participer au réglage de la fréquence du réseau. En analysant les limites des correcteurs classiques de types P, PI et PID, nous avons opté pour la commande LQ munie d’une approche multimodèle et qui a montré de bonnes performances aux résultats de simulation. Certaines améliorations ont été ajoutées à cette loi de commande du genre modèle de référence, action intégrale, … afin de permettre une poursuite de puissance autour d’une référence donnée qui change selon la fréquence du réseau / The fast and big growth of wind power around the world required the implementation of new standardized criteria to integrate this kind of energy into electric networks without affecting the quality and stability of the system. These criteria could ask the wind turbines to participate in the network frequency control when necessary. Thus, the works presented in this thesis aim to provide a control law solution that allows wind turbines to participate the grid frequency control. By analyzing the limits of traditional regulators such as P, PI and PID, we opted for the LQ controller combined to a multi-model approach because of the good performances shown in the simulation results. Some improvements were added to this control law: reference model, integral action, ... to allow a power trucking for a given reference that changes with the grid frequency

This thesis approaches the problem of the cost-efficient wind turbine foundation on an onshore site of clayey soil characteristics. The given soil stratigraphy includes a layer of clay and two sands of different density. The characteristics of the soil and the water level that were used as input come from a site in Peloponissos, Greece. The applied wind, static and seismic loads on this study were resolved with the German DIN standards, and other related research and European standards. The safety factors were adjusted for wind turbines. For the pile solution, after the bearing and overturning adequacy against the horizontal and vertical loads was proven with the calculation of the DIN equations, then the model was inserted in the Pfahl program using DIN 4017 equations to calculate settlements. Firstly, a shallow foundation of various dimensions in the clay layer over the water level with all the necessary checks was considered. Afterward, a deep foundation solution of a single bored pile, with reinforcement steel casing, of various diameters was investigated. The different foundation solutions were assessed and compared on a technical and economic basis. As a conclusion, the 0.70 meter diameter single pile was chosen as the best solution because it needs only a few days for construction, and it is the most cost-efficient. The chosen circular footing was of a diameter of 10 meters and 1.5 meter raft thickness, but proved unfeasible because of high excavations costs. The checks on the DIN standards and Eurocode that set the boundaries for the design in the two cases were recognised and possible future work goals were discussed.

The purpose of this research is to propose a novel wind turbine for an omni-flow wind energy system and investigate its aerodynamic performance. The geometry of the novel wind turbine is based upon the impulse turbine technology which has been successful in wave energy. In this study, both numerical and experimental studies were conducted to evaluate the aerodynamic features of this wind turbine. The numerical method was validated by a comparison between numerical and experimental results over a range of tip speed ratios. Results obtained from experiments and simulations indicate that the proposed wind turbine can be employed. Additionally, on the basis of the analyses performed, this new wind turbine has the potential for having a good startup feature, which means that this wind turbine can be suitable for applications in an urban environment. As an important component, the stator of this wind turbine can increase the passing flow velocity by 20%. Meanwhile, the passing flow direction also can be optimised by the stator. Aerodynamics of the wind turbine was analysed under the non-uniform flow condition, because the flow is non-uniform inside the omni-flow wind energy system. It was found that the maximum power coefficient of such a turbine under the non-uniform flow condition is lower than that under the uniform flow condition. Due to the non-uniform flow, the blades experience different flow velocities, and as a consequence, undergo different aerodynamic loads during one operation cycle. Thus the generated torque and thrust on a blade are subjected to frequent and periodical changes. Influences of the geometrical parameters on the aerodynamic characteristics of this wind turbine were investigated. From the initial study, it was found that changes of hub-to-tip ratios, numbers of blades, aerofoils and numbers of guide vanes, can significantly affect the II power performance. Additionally, the wind turbine obtained high values of maximum torque coefficients with changing geometrical parameters.

abstract: An advantage of doubly fed induction generators (DFIGs) as compared to conventional fixed speed wind turbine generators is higher efficiency. This higher efficiency is achieved due to the ability of the DFIG to operate near its optimal turbine efficiency over a wider range of wind speeds through variable speed operation. This is achieved through the application of a back-to-back converter that tightly controls the rotor current and allows for asynchronous operation. In doing so, however, the power electronic converter effectively decouples the inertia of the turbine from the system. Hence, with the increase in penetration of DFIG based wind farms, the effective inertia of the system will be reduced. With this assertion, the present study is aimed at identifying the systematic approach to pinpoint the impact of increased penetration of DFIGs on a large realistic system. The techniques proposed in this work are tested on a large test system representing the Midwestern portion of the U.S. Interconnection. The electromechanical modes that are both detrimentally and beneficially affected by the change in inertia are identified. The combination of small-signal stability analysis coupled with the large disturbance analysis of exciting the mode identified is found to provide a detailed picture of the impact on the system. The work is extended to develop suitable control strategies to mitigate the impact of significant DFIG penetration on a large power system. Supplementary control is developed for the DFIG power converters such that the effective inertia contributed by these wind generators to the system is increased. Results obtained on the large realistic power system indicate that the frequency nadir following a large power impact is effectively improved with the proposed control strategy. The proposed control is also validated against sudden wind speed changes in the form of wind gusts and wind ramps. The beneficial impact in terms of damping power system oscillations is observed, which is validated by eigenvalue analysis. Another control mechanism is developed aiming at designing the power system stabilizer (PSS) for a DFIG similar to the PSS of synchronous machines. Although both the supplementary control strategies serve the purpose of improving the damping of the mode with detrimental impact, better damping performance is observed when the DFIG is equipped with both the controllers. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Electrical Engineering 2010