Wind Turbine Performance Assessment Using Reference Transfer Functions
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Solution Overview
Problem
Assessing the performance impact of power upgrades in wind turbines is challenging due to changes in local wind speeds and other environmental conditions, making direct comparisons unreliable.
Innovation Solution
A method involving dividing wind turbines into target and reference groups, generating transfer functions to estimate wind speeds, and comparing power performance data before and after upgrades to isolate the upgrade's effect.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If direct comparison of wind turbine performance before and after power upgrade is performed, then assessment simplicity is maintained, but reliability of performance assessment deteriorates due to changes in local wind speeds and environmental conditions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces reference wind turbines as intermediary elements that serve as control groups. These reference turbines provide baseline performance data that accounts for environmental changes, allowing the upgraded turbines to be compared against a adjusted baseline rather than raw historical data. This intermediary approach isolates the effect of the power upgrade from environmental variations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by establishing transfer functions and baseline performance models before the power upgrade occurs. Wind speed transfer functions are developed to relate reference turbine measurements to target turbine conditions, and baseline power curves are determined beforehand. This preliminary characterization enables accurate post-upgrade assessment by providing a pre-established reference framework.
2Ease of operation
If locally measured wind speeds are used for performance assessment after power upgrade, then measurement simplicity is maintained, but measurement precision deteriorates due to power upgrade influence on local wind flow
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses reference wind turbines as intermediary measurement points that are not affected by the power upgrade. These reference turbines provide clean, unbiased wind speed measurements that serve as the basis for calculating transfer functions. The transfer functions then translate these reference measurements to estimate what the target turbine wind speeds would have been without the upgrade, effectively using the reference turbines as measurement intermediaries.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a virtual copy of the pre-upgrade measurement system by using the transfer function to replicate what the target turbine wind speed measurements would have been. Instead of directly measuring the corrupted post-upgrade wind speeds, the system copies the relationship between reference and target turbine measurements from the pre-upgrade period and applies it to the post-upgrade reference measurements to generate corrected target wind speed estimates.
Data Source
AI summary
Assessing performance impact of a power upgrade of one or more wind turbines of a wind farm that includes a group of target wind turbines and a group of reference wind turbines. For each of the target wind turbines, a transfer function is generated, establishing a relationship between the locally measured wind speed at the target wind turbine and locally measured wind speeds at each of the reference wind turbines. A power upgrade is performed on each of the target wind turbines, and subsequently power performance data is obtained for the reference wind turbines and the target wind turbines, within one or more wind speed intervals. For the target wind turbines, the wind speed intervals are based on estimated wind speeds, based on locally measured wind speeds at the reference wind turbines and the transfer functions.