Task 44 Work Plan and Objectives
Task 44 is divided into four work packages. Read more about each one below.
Work Package 1
Collection of research results, state-of-the-art and expert consensus
This work will seek to collect, organize, and distribute the state-of-the-art in wind farm control. This includes developments in research, field trials, and commercial activities. The work package will additionally collect and report on the expert consensus on wind farm control, through repeated expert elicitations.
The top overall goal will be to identify both the state-of-the-art, in research and in practice, and through expert consensus, an identification of best practices and areas in need of research and development.
Activities in this work package include:
- Development of wind farm control terminology: Wind farm control terminology is not used consistently across the research and industrial communities. A first portion of work will seek to coordinate preferred language to develop consistent terms across the field
- Development of database of research results and algorithms: An online database will be developed to collect, organize and disseminate state of the art results in wind farm control. The database will be updated regularly and provide an ongoing picture of the current state of the art in wind farm flow control.
- Expert elicitations: Several surveys of experts across research and industry will be carried out to develop consensus on what is current best practice in wind farm control, what are the barriers to wide adoption, and what research is needed
- Recommendations and best practices based on the analysis of state of the art and expert elicitations, a set of recommendations and a best practice for WFC design and deployment will be developed.
- Workshops in support of all of the above activities, workshops will be arranged for discussion and dissemination of recent research
Work Package 1 Leads:Paul Fleming and Irene Equinoa Erdozain |
Work Package 2
Provide the foundation and best practice for realistic evaluation of wind farm control and an uncertainty set to be used when developing and benchmarking WFC algorithms
Quantifying the uncertainty is key for assessing the benefit of wind farm control and mitigating the barrier to implement concepts in industrial practice. This work package is approaching the uncertainty assessment of wind farm control in a structured approach. The work package will be organized by characterizing the different sources of uncertainties in wind farm flow control which contribute most to quantify AEP calculation and structural load reduction potential. For each of the sources the aim is to quantify the uncertainty range and provide realistic assumptions and methods of implementation for an overall uncertainty assessment. The goal of WP2 is to provide the foundation and best practice or realistic evaluation of wind farm control and an uncertainty set to be used when developing and benchmarking WFC algorithms.
Uncertainties of the following sources will be considered:
Uncertain inflow conditions
The variability of the wind is one of the main sources of uncertainty. The
continuously changing inflow conditions are considered as well as day-night changes in atmosphericconditions.
Model mismatch
Flow models Flow dynamics are described by the Navier-Stokes equations. However, for wind farm control often reduced-order or control-oriented models are used. This potential model inadequacy introduces a second important source of uncertainty.
Model mismatch
Turbine models Extracting the wind power from the wind is a complex task and assumptions and simplifications are made which introduce uncertainty.
Actuators: The transducers that are used to influence the flow within a wind farm (e.g. yaw position, pitch position) also bound the implementation by their physical constraints. Important aspects are: bandwidth, accuracy, energy consumption, robustness and resolution.
Sensors
The transducer that is used to measure the effect of certain quantities within a wind farm (e.g. power measurement, strains, flows) also bound the implementation by their physical constraints. Important aspects are: bandwidth, reliability, availability, accuracy, robustness and resolution.
Work Package 2 Leads:Eric Simley |
Work Package 3
Overview of control technology/algorithm
In this work package an overview will be generated of the required software/algorithms for wind farm control. The work package will be organized by characterizing the different building blocks which define the majority of wind farm control algorithms. For each of these building blocks the aim is to get an overview of the available options, their specifications, their ability to work with uncertainty and their Technology Readiness Level (TRL). Combining the individual building blocks will result in a full landscape of the solution space, an identification of barriers and a roadmap.
The following building blocks are defined for wind farm control:
Control technologies
The control technology defines how the control algorithm interacts with the physical system (e.g. pitch actuation, yaw actuation, lidar measurements). Important aspects here are: controllability, observability, loads, bandwidth, costs and availability
Objective function
The (multi-)objective for which wind farm is employed (e.g. loads, power, predictability) and how this can be mathematically quantified. Important aspects are: convexity, constraints, scalability and predictability.
Internal models
The model used for decision making e.g. engineering model, empirical model. Important aspects are: accuracy, computational load, coding language, included physics, disturbance
modelling and fidelity.
Estimators
The decision making typically depends on the fusion between models and data collected by the sensors. Algorithms have to be developed that bring these two together. Important aspects are: accuracy, sampling time, sensors required, type of model knowledge required and convergence speed.
Optimizers
The objective function conditioned by the internal model will be used to make decisions on how actuators are employed over time. The important aspects are: reliability, convergence, convexity, adaptability, robustness, ability to work with uncertainty, and computational complexity.
The overview of the different building blocks will give a full landscape of the required software. Different combinations can be made of the different building block leading to a full landscape of the solution space.
In this work package an overview will be given of this landscape with a focus on the scalability and the complexity/performance trade-off.
Work Package 3 Leads:Jan-Willem van Wingerden, Marcus Becker |
Work Package 4
Outreach and Collaboration with other ongoing WFC R&D activities
The final work package is dedicated to collaboration and coordination with other IEA wind tasks and WFC R&D activities in general.
Of particular relevance are:
- Task 31 Wakebench – Both tasks has primary focus on wake interaction between turbines
- Task 32 Lidar – Lidar measurements can become an integral part of wind farm control
- Task 37 Systems Engineering – Having a robust wind farm flow control system can have large impact on how a wind power plant acts a a system.
- Task 36 Forecasting – Wind farm control can impact the forecasted wind power production, both by increasing the produced power, but also making it more predictable.
- Task 42 Lifetime extension – One potential of WFC is better balancing of WTG lifetime usage with minimal AEP downside.
- Task 43 Digitalization – WFC is expected to make heavy use of digitalization of wind energy and feed essential data back to other wind digitalization systems.
Collaboration is also sought with non-IEA Wind efforts such as the EU H2020 FarmConners and the US Atmosphere 2 Electrons and AWAKEN projects.
The goal is to ensure that all relevant research and experience with WFC, both from the task participants and from other efforts, are coordinated and captured to ensure the most accurate overview and best possible road-map for impactful research to accelerate further adoption of WFC. The outputs of WP1 in terms of the state of the art and expert elicitation on WFC will be combined with the developments in WP2 and WP3 as well as other ongoing WFC activities to assess the potential gaps and new trends in WFC research and implementation. The corresponding roadmap based on this assessment, accordingly, feeds back into WP1 to enable continuous update of the task and, ultimately, the WFC technology.
The activities within this work package can be listed as:
Identification and classification of ongoing WFC efforts
In addition to a more traditional literature review and state-of-the art assessment, a continuous review of ongoing and newly started WFC
activities, both in academia and industry is to be performed in this activity and added to thedatabase. The identified efforts will be classified with respect to their specifics (e.g. WFC-oriented model field test, new controller implementation, etc.) and a 2-way communication with the task will be established.
Assessment of research gaps and new trends
The outcome of the state of the art reviews and expert elicitation surveys will be compiled together with the ongoing efforts to identify the research gaps
and new trends in WFC.
Development of WFC research road-map
Based on the analysis of research gaps and new trends in WFC, a road-map with a special focus on innovation will be developed and continuously updated
throughout the task.
Workshops
To ensure a smooth dialogue with the identified WFC efforts, a series of workshops will be organised in collaboration. The activities of all the coordinated efforts will be presented to the WFC stakeholders to provide a platform to show and see the newest developments in WFC technology. The intention is to coordinate with other WFC research efforts and plan the workshops to be held in connection with other WFC expert meetings and conferences.
Work Package 4 Lead:Tuhfe Gocmen |
Send your mail at
paul.fleming@nrel.gov