Global Gust Climate Evaluation and Its Influence on Wind Turbines

Abstract

Strong gusts negatively affect wind turbines in many ways. They (1) harm their structural safety; (2) reduce their wind energy output; and (3) lead to a shorter wind turbine rotor blade fatigue life. Therefore, the goal of this study was to provide a global assessment of the gust climate, considering its influence on wind turbines. The gust characteristics analyzed were: (1) the gust speed return values for 30, 50 and 100 years; (2) the share of gust speed exceedances of cut-out speed; and (3) the gust factor. In order to consider the seasonal variation of gust speed, gust characteristics were evaluated on a monthly basis. The global monthly wind power density was simulated and geographical restrictions were applied to highlight gust characteristics in areas that are generally suitable for wind turbine installation. Gust characteristics were computed based on ERA-interim data on a 1 • × 1 • spatial resolution grid. After comprehensive goodness-of-fit evaluation of 12 theoretical distributions, Wakeby distribution was used to compute gust speed return values. Finally, the gust characteristics were integrated into the newly developed wind turbine gust index. It was found that the Northeastern United States and Southeast Canada, Newfoundland, the southern tip of South America, and Northwestern Europe are most negatively affected by the impacts of gusts. In regions where trade winds dominate, such as eastern Brazil, the Sahara, southern parts of Somalia, and southeastern parts of the Arabian Peninsula, the gust climate is well suitable for wind turbine installation.

Forecasting Peak Wind Gusts Using Meteorologically Stratified Gust Factors and MOS Guidance

“…Reliable gust forecasts can reduce the risk of human danger, cost drawbacks, and structural damage. For wind energy, reliable forecasts can prevent cut-out events in which wind turbines abruptly stop, causing fatigue in turbine components, transitory changes in power transmission, and losses in energy yield (Gutiérrez and Fovell 2018;Suomi and Vihma 2018;Jung et al 2017).…”

A Study on Directly Interconnected Offshore Wind Systems during Wind Gust Conditions

“…Future work may include an analysis of the other conditions. EOG and ECG profiles are generated using Equations (1) and (2).…”

“…Offshore wind will play a significant role in both Ireland's and Europe's decarbonisation plans. Ireland's large offshore territory, coupled with high wind availability across each season [1,2], make it an ideal candidate for offshore wind development. In line with the National Energy and Climate plan, 5 GW of offshore wind is planned for deployment in Ireland by 2030 [3].…”

Historical Winter Storm Atlas for Germany (GeWiSA)

“…The spatiotemporal extent of storm events greatly varies depending on the geographical location and the time during the year [2]. In Central Europe, storm events can roughly be classified into two categories: small-scale thunderstorms, which mainly occur from May to September [3][4][5][6], and large-scale winter storms mainly occurring from October to March, which are related to intense low-pressure systems [2,[7][8][9][10]. As a part of Central Europe, Germany was often hit by severe winter storms, causing total losses of about US$ 37bn and 300 fatalities since 1981 [1].…”

“…The most destructive feature of winter storms are high-impact gusts, which are short-time fluctuations of the horizontal wind vector [11,12]. High gust speed (GS) seriously affects numerous sectors including forestry [13][14][15], insurance [16], local authorities [17], wind energy [2], waterways transport [18] and air traffic [19]. In these sectors, there is great interest in spatially explicit modeled GS fields for improving the identification of storm damage risk factors [15].…”