Wind power is a renewable energy source that is making great strides in the global energy sector. While wind power is a renewable energy source, it is not entirely free from carbon emissions. This is because the production of wind turbines is dependent on the use of energy, and as a result can emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. This is because the production of wind turbines is dependent on the use of energy and as a result can emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. The emissions come from two sources, the materials used in the wind turbine and the energy used in the manufacturing process. Because wind turbine production is global, the geographical location also affects the climate impact. The purpose of this study is therefore to evaluate the climate impact from material and energy use for the different turbine components. Furthermore, it aims to evaluate the total climate impact between on-and offshore wind power as well as evaluate the climate impact between production in Sweden, Germany and China. The climate impact is based on 13 Vestas LCA reports, together with a model developed in excel. The results show that the location of production plays a significant role in the total emissions, due to the large variation in the electricity mix between different countries. Generally, the steel components are the largest contributors to the total CO2 emissions. Consequently, offshore wind has a higher climate impact than its onshore counterpart because the offshore foundation is made of steel. The result is, however, limited due to the lack of standardisation and since specific information regarding wind power is hard to acquire. / Vindkraft är en förnyelsebar energikälla, som gör stora framsteg inom den globala energisektorn. Samtidigt som vindkraften är förnyelsebar, är den inte helt fri från koldioxidutsläpp. Detta beror på att produktionen av vindkraftverk kräver energi och kan därför släppa ut stora mängder koldioxid. Utsläppen kommer från två källor, de material som används i vindkraftverket och energin som behövs vid tillverkningen. Eftersom produktion av vindkraftverk sker på ett globalt plan, har även den geografiska platsen där tillverkningen sker en påverkan på klimatpåverkan. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka klimatpåverkan från material och energianvändningen fördelat över vindkraftverks huvudkomponenter. Utöver detta, syftar den även till att undersöka den totala klimatpåverkan mellan land- och havsbaserad vindkraft samt hur klimatpåverkan skiljer sig åt mellan produktion i Sverige, Tyskland och Kina. Studien utgår från 13 Vestas LCA rapporter och använde en excelmodell för att utvärdera utsläppen av koldioxid. Resultatet visar att den geografiska platsen där produktionen sker har stor betydelse för de totala utsläppen, eftersom det är stor variation i energimix mellan olika länder. Överlag är det de stora stålkomponenterna som har störst bidrag till klimatpåverkan. Till följd av detta har havsbaserad vindkraft större klimatpåverkan än landbaserad, eftersom fundamentet primärt består av stål. Resultatet är dock begränsat, på grund av bristen av standardisering i rapportering och eftersom det är svårt att tillhandahålla specifika data gällande vindkraft.

Climate change is an evermore urging existential treat to the human enterprise. Mean temperature and greenhouse gas emissions have in-creased exponentially since the industrial revolution. But solutions are also mushrooming with exponential pace. Renewable energy technologies, such as wind and solar power, are deployed like never before and their costs have decreased significantly. In order to allow for further transformation of the energy system these technologies must be refined and optimised. In wind energy one important field with high potential of refinement is aerodynamics. The aerodynamics of wind turbines constitutes one challenging research frontier in aerodynamics today.   In this study, a novel approach for calculating wind turbine flow is developed. The approach is based on the partially parabolic Navier-Stokes equations, which can be solved computationally with higher efficiency as compared to the fully elliptic version. The modelling of wind turbine thrust is done using actuator-disk theory and the torque is modelled by application of the Joukowsky rotor. A validation of the developed model and force implementation is conducted using four different validation cases.   In order to provide value for industrial wind energy projects, the model must be extended to account for turbulence (and terrain in case of onshore projects). Possible candidates for turbulence modelling are parabolic k-ε and explicit Reynolds stress turbulence models. The terrain could possibly be incorporated consistently with the used projection method by altering the finite difference grid layout.

<p>This work is a five-article-based collection of published and to-be-published research articles that explore a novel combination of inlet conditions, wind turbine design, and non-flat topography by performing scaled-down experiments in a wind tunnel.</p>

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Master of Science / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Guoqiang Hu / In some types of renewable energy systems such as wind turbines or solar power plants, the optimal operating conditions are influenced by the intermittent nature of these energies. This fact, along with the modeling difficulties of such systems, provides incentive to look for non-model based adaptive techniques to address the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) problem. In this thesis, a novel extremum seeking algorithm is proposed for systems where the optimal point and the optimal value of the cost function are allowed to be time varying. A sinusoidal perturbation based technique is used to estimate the gradient of the cost function. Afterwards, a robust optimization method is developed to drive the system to its optimal point. Since this method does not require any knowledge about the dynamic system or the structure of the input-to-output mapping, it is considered to be a non-model based adaptive technique. The proposed method is then employed for maximizing the energy capture from the wind in a variable speed wind turbine. It is shown that without any measurements of wind velocity or power, the proposed method can drive the wind turbine to the optimal operating point. The generated power is observed to be very close to the maximum possible values.

Master of Science / Department of Electrical Engineering / William B. Kuhn / During the development of an educational renewable energy production platform, it was found that there were no low-cost, efficient grid-tie interfaces for a 160 W DC wind turbine. Typically, a small DC wind turbine is used in conjunction with a rechargeable battery bank or, if the wind turbine is directly interfaced with a grid-tie inverter, a regulator with a diversion-load. The use of batteries is undesirable due to their high-cost and high-maintenance characteristics. Diversion loads by nature waste power, as any excess energy that cannot be accepted by a battery or inverter is usually converted into heat through a resistive element. Initially, a 24 V DC, 160 W Air Breeze small wind turbine was directly connected to an Enphase Energy M190 grid-tie micro-inverter. The 24 V DC Air Breeze wind turbine is designed to charge a battery or bank of batteries while the M190 micro-inverter is designed to convert the DC output of a 200 W solar panel to grid-tied AC power. As expected, the power-production response time associated with the small wind turbine and the power-accepting, load-matching response time of the micro-inverter were not compatible. The rapidly changing power output of the small wind turbine conflicted with the slow response time of the micro-inverter resulting in little power production. Ultimately, the response time mismatch also produced sufficiently large voltage spikes to damage the turbine electronics. In this thesis, a solution for a low-cost, efficient grid-tie interface using no batteries and no diversion load is presented. A capacitance of eight Farads is placed in parallel with the small wind turbine and the micro inverter. The large capacitance sufficiently smoothes the potential abrupt voltage changes produced by the wind turbine, allowing the micro-inverter adequate time to adjust its load for optimal power conversion. Laboratory experiments and data from an implementation of such a parallel super capacitor wind turbine to grid-tie micro-inverter configuration are provided along with DC and AC power production monitoring circuits interfaced with a micro controller.

A stall-regulated wind turbine with fixed-speed operation provides a configuration which is one of the cheapest and simplest forms of wind generation and configurations. This type of turbine, however, is non-optimal at low winds, stresses the component structure and gives rise to significant power peaks during early stall conditions at high wind speeds. These problems can be overcome by having a properly designed generator speed control. Therefore, to track the maximum power locus curve at low winds, suppress the power peaks at medium winds, limit the power at a rated level at high winds and obtain a satisfactory power-wind speed curve performance (that closely resembles the ideal power-wind speed curve) with minimum stress torque simultaneously over the whole range of the wind speed variations, the availability of active control is vital. The main purpose of this study is to develop an internal model control (IMC) design for the squirrel-cage induction generator (SCIG), coupled with a full-rated power converter of a small (25 kW), stall-regulated, variable-speed wind-turbine (SRVSWT) system, which is subject to variations in the generator speed, electromagnetic torque and rotor flux. The study was done using simulations only. The objective of the controller was to optimise the generator speed to maximise the active power generated during the partial load region and maintain or restrict the generator speed to reduce/control the torque stress and the power-peaking between the partial and full load regions, before power was limited at the rated value of 25 kW at the full load region. The considered investigation involved estimating the proportional-integral (PI) and integral-proportional (IP) controllers parameter values used to track the stator-current producing torque, the rotor flux and the angular mechanical generator speed, before being used in the indirect vector control (IVC) and the sensorless indirect vector control (SLIVC) model algorithms of the SCIG system. The design of the PI and IP controllers was based on the fourth-order model of the SCIG, which is directly coupled to the full-rated power converter through the machine stator, whereas the machine rotor is connected to the turbine rotor via a gearbox. Both step and realistic wind speed profiles were considered. The IMC-based PI and IP controllers (IMC-PI-IP) tuning rule was proven to have smoothened the power curve and shown to give better estimation results compared to the IMC-based PI controllers (IMC-PI), Ziegler-Nichols (ZN) and Tyreus-Luyben (ZN) tuning rules. The findings also showed that for the SRVSWT system that employed the IVC model algorithm with the IMC-PI-IP tuning rule, considering the application of a maintained/constant speed (CS) strategy at the intermediate load region is more profitable than utilizing SRVSWT with the modified power tracking (MoPT) strategy. Besides that, the finding also suggested that, for the IMC-PI-IP approach, the IVC does provide better power tracking performance than the SLIVC model algorithm.

Composite materials are being widely used in light weight structural applications due to their high specific stiffness and strength properties. However, predicting their mechanical behaviour accurately is a difficult task because of the complicated nature of these heterogeneous materials. This behaviour is not easily modeled with most of existing macro mechanics based models. Designers compensate for the model unknowns in failure predictions by generating overly conservative designs with relatively simple ply stacking sequences, thereby mitigating many of the benefits promised by composites. The research presented in this dissertation was undertaken with the primary goal of providing efficient methodologies for use in the design of composite structures considering inherent material variability and model shortcomings. A micromechanics based methodology is proposed to simulate stiffness, strength, and fatigue behaviour of composites. The computational micromechanics framework is based on the properties of the constituents of composite materials: the fiber, matrix and fiber/matrix interface. This model helps the designer to understand in-depth the failure modes in these materials and design efficient structures utilizing arbitrary layups with a reduced requirement for supporting experimental testing. The only limiting factor in using a micromechanics model is the challenge in obtaining the constituent properties. The overall novelty of this dissertation is to calibrate these constituent properties by integrating the micromechanics approach with a Bayesian statistical model. The early research explored the probabilistic aspects of the constituent properties to calculate the stiffness characteristics of a unidirectional lamina. Then these stochastic stiffness properties were considered as an input to analyze the wing box of a wind turbine blade. Results of this study gave a gateway to map constituent uncertainties to the top-level structure. Next, a stochastic first ply failure load method was developed based on micromechanics and Bayesian inference. Finally, probabilistic SN curves of composite materials were calculated after fatigue model parameter calibration using Bayesian inference. Throughout this research, extensive experimental data sets from literature have been used to calibrate and evaluate the proposed models. The micromechanics based probabilistic framework formulated here is quite general, and applied on the specific application of a wind turbine blade. The procedure may be easily generalized to deal with other structural applications such as storage tanks, pressure vessels, civil structural cladding, unmanned air vehicles, automotive bodies, etc. which can be explored in future work. / Graduate / 0548 / enginer315@gmail.com

This thesis report describes the modeling procedure for available the wind turbine generator (WTG) technologies. The models are generic in nature and manufacturer independent. These models are implemented on commercially available dynamic simulation software platforms like PSCAD/EMTDC and MATLAB/SIMULINK. A brief introduction to the available WTG types is provided to understand the technological differences and their key features. The related theoretical concepts to the working of a WTG are explained, which acts as an aid for model development and implementation. Using the theoretical concepts as basis, a WTG model is divided into four parts : 1. Aerodynamic model 2. Mechanical drive train model 3. Electrical machine model 4. Controller model Once the different parts of a WTG are introduced, a groundwork for model implementation on the software platforms is laid. A step-by-step process of implementing a PSCAD or MATLAB model of a WTG is introduced in this thesis. Starting with the most fundamental WTG technology such as fixed-speed also known as direct-connect wind turbine. The model implementation is adanvced to other superior technology like the dynamic rotor resistance control (DRR) and the doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG). To better understand the working of a DFIG, a current-source regulated model (without electrical machine) emulating the DFIG is built on both PSCAD and MATLAB. A full blown converter model of the DFIG with back-to-back converter is then built in PSCAD/EMTDC. An approach to determine the reactive power capability (Q limits) of a DFIG is described. Rotor current limitation and stator current limitation of the DFIG are considered in determining the minimum and maximum reactive power delievered by the DFIG. Variation in the Q limits of a DFIG for change in wind speed is analysed with two different wind speed scenarios. 1. Wind speed from cut-in to rated i.e. 6 m/s - 14 m/s. 2. Wind speed above rated to cut-out i.e. 14 m/s - 20 m/s. Such an analysis, is useful in determining the operating mode of the DFIG. At low wind speeds (below rated), the DFIG can be operated as a STATCOM for exporting and importing reactive power (similar to synchronous machines). While above rated wind speeds, the DFIG can be set to produce maximum active power. Using the DFIG current-source model implemented in MATLAB/SIMULINK, laboratory experiments to plot the power profile of the DFIG is explained. Another experiment to perform independent P-Q control of the DFIG is also included in this report. / text

<p>The workin this thesis deals with the development of anaeroelastic simulation tool for horizontal axis wind turbineapplications.</p><p>Horizontal axiswind turbines can experience significanttime varying aerodynamic loads, potentially causing adverseeffects on structures, mechanical components, and powerproduction. The need of computational and experimentalprocedures for investigating aeroelastic stability and dynamicresponse have increased as wind turbines become lighter andmore flexible.</p><p>A finite element model for simulation of the dynamicresponse of horizontal axis wind turbines has been developed.The simulations are performed using the commercial finiteelement software SOLVIA, which is a program developed forgeneral analyses, linear as well as non-linear, static as wellas dynamic. The aerodynamic model, used to transform the windflow field to loads on the blades, is a Blade- Element/Momentummodel. The aerodynamic code is developed by FFA (TheAeronautical Research Institute of Sweden) and is astate-of-the-art code incorporating a number of extensions tothe Blade-Element/Momentum formulation. SOSIS-W, developed byTeknikgruppen AB was used to develop wind time series formodelling different wind conditions.</p><p>The model is rather general, and different configurations ofthe structural model and various type of wind conditions couldeasily be simulated. The model is primarily intended for use asa research tool when influences of specific dynamic effects areinvestigated.</p><p>Simulation results for the three-bladed wind turbine Danwin180 kW are presented as a verification example.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>aeroelastic modelling, rotor aerodynamics,structural dynamics, wind turbine, AERFORCE, SOSIS-W,SOLVIA</p>