A Detailed Wind Turbine Blade Cost Model

Bortolotti, Pietro; Berry, Derek; Murray, Robynne E.; Gaertner, Evan; Jenne, Dale; Damiani, Rick; Barter, Garrett; Dykes, Katherine

doi:10.2172/1529217

Cited by 30 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…For a single WTB, a map consisting of blade dimensions such as the one seen in Figure 1 could be used. On the other hand, many different blades exist [17,18,68,69,100] and the different arrangements of shear webs, seen in Figure 2, present another mapping challenge. Therefore, generating a map for every blade becomes an infeasible solution.…”

Section: Path Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With damage to WTs being unavoidable, an optimal strategy is needed between maintenance efforts and costs due to failures [7,15]. The Wind Turbine Blades (WTBs) are one of the most expensive parts of the structure [16], both in terms of material and labour costs [17,18], and replacing them is a costly operation, therefore, preventative maintenance is necessary.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Internal Wind Turbine Blade Inspections Using UAVs: Analysis and Design Issues

Kulsinskas,

Durdevic,

Ortiz-Arroyo

2021

Energies

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Interior and exterior wind turbine blade inspections are necessary to extend the lifetime of wind turbine generators. The use of unmanned vehicles is an alternative to exterior wind turbine blade inspections performed by technicians that require the use of cranes and ropes. Interior wind turbine blade inspections are even more challenging due to the confined spaces, lack of illumination, and the presence of potentially harmful internal structural components. Additionally, the cost of manned interior wind turbine blade inspections is a major limiting factor. This paper analyses all aspects of the viability of using manually controlled or autonomous aerial vehicles for interior wind turbine blade inspections. We discuss why the size, weight, and flight time of a vehicle, in addition to the structure of the wind turbine blade, are the main limiting factors in performing internal blade inspections. We also describe the design issues that must be considered to provide autonomy to unmanned vehicles and the control system, the sensors that can be used, and introduce some of the algorithms for localization, obstacle avoidance and path planning that are best suited for the task. Lastly, we briefly describe which non-destructive test instrumentation can be used for the purpose.

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Section: Path Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Internal Wind Turbine Blade Inspections Using UAVs: Analysis and Design Issues

Kulsinskas,

Durdevic,

Ortiz-Arroyo

2021

Energies

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“…Throughout the years, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has released multiple models that estimate the costs of wind energy. This work combines a detailed blade cost model (Bortolotti et al, 2019a), a model to estimate the costs of the other wind turbine components and the overall turbine capital costs (Fingersh et al, 2006), and a financial model to compute the LCOE (Stehly and Beiter, 2019). Although the costs of some components-mostly in the nacelle-are estimated via semiempirical relations tuned on historical data that get updated every few years, the blade cost model adopts a bottom-up approach and estimates the total costs of a blade as the sum of variable and fixed costs.…”

Section: Cost Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Land-based wind turbines with flexible rail transportable blades – Part I: Conceptual design and aeroservoelastic performance

Bortolotti¹,

Johnson²,

Abbas³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. This work investigates the conceptual design and the aeroservoelastic performance of land-based wind turbines whose blades can be transported on rail via controlled bending. The turbines have a nameplate power of 5 MW and a rotor diameter of 206 m, and they aim to represent the next generation of land-based machines. Three upwind designs and two downwind designs are presented, combining different design goals together with conventional glass and pultruded carbon fiber laminates in the spar caps. The results show that controlled flexing requires a reduction in the flapwise stiffness of the blades, but it represents a promising pathway to increase the size of land-based wind turbine rotors. Given the required stiffness, the rotor can be designed either downwind with standard rotor preconing and nacelle uptilt angles or upwind with higher-than-usual angles. A downwind-specific controller is also presented, featuring a cut-out wind speed reduced to 19 m per second and a pitch-to-stall shutdown strategy to minimize blade-tip deflections toward the tower. The flexible upwind and downwind rotor designs equipped with pultruded carbon fiber spar caps are found to generate the lowest levelized cost of energy, 2.9 % and 1.3 %, respectively, less than the segmented design. The paper concludes with several recommendations for future work in the area of large flexible wind turbine rotors.

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“…While the calculated blade mass of the LW-13 is almost double the blade mass of the IEA 3.4 MW at 31.6 t, it is very light for a 102m blade. For comparison, a 100 m blade developed from Sandia National Laboratories has a blade mass of 50 t based on estimates found in [20]. This could mean that the LW-13 could have a blade mass that is up to 33% lighter than a conventional turbine of the same rotor diameter, which could lead to significant cost decreases.…”

Section: The 100 W/m 2 Lowwind Turbinementioning

confidence: 99%

Competitiveness of a low specific power, low cut-out wind speed wind turbine in North and Central Europe towards 2050

Swisher¹,

León²,

Bermúdez³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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This work is part of an ongoing study, creatively named the "LowWind Project", which is a collaborative effort between DTU and industry to design and eventually implement a 3.4 MW 100 W/m^2 low wind (LW) turbine with a hub height of 127.5 m, a rotor diameter of 208 m, and a cut-out wind speed of 13 m/s. This paper investigates at what price point this LW turbine becomes competitive in Northern and Central Europe's energy system, as well as what impact the introduction of this technology has on the system. Similarly, the impact system flexibility has on LW investment is also analysed by limiting future transmission investment. Furthermore, this paper also analyses the amount of revenue this LW technology could generate compared to conventional turbines to further investigate the business case for this technology. The main finding here is that this LW technology begins to see investment at a 45% price increase over a conventional onshore wind turbine with an equal hub height (127.5 m) and a smaller rotor diameter (142 m vs 208 m). The addition of LW technology also leads to a reduction in transmission investment, and similarly, reductions in transmission capacity lead to further investment in LW technology. Lastly, it is shown that in the future Northern and Central European energy system, in wind dominated areas such as Denmark, this LW technology could generate revenues that are more than 120% higher than conventional turbines (per MW), making the case that this technology could be a worthy endeavor.<br>

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A Detailed Wind Turbine Blade Cost Model

Cited by 30 publications

References 2 publications

Internal Wind Turbine Blade Inspections Using UAVs: Analysis and Design Issues

Internal Wind Turbine Blade Inspections Using UAVs: Analysis and Design Issues

Land-based wind turbines with flexible rail transportable blades – Part I: Conceptual design and aeroservoelastic performance

Competitiveness of a low specific power, low cut-out wind speed wind turbine in North and Central Europe towards 2050

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