SUPERGEN WIND ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES-CORE, Towards the Offshore Wind Power Station

The Mission of Supergen Wind 2'To undertake research to achieve an integrated, cost-effective, reliable & available Offshore Wind Power Station.'This will be done under the four objectives:Reliability.Resource estimation.Scaling up of turbine sizes.Lifetime costs.The project will have two parallel Initiating Themes during the first two years. The first to deal with research into the physics and engineering of the offshore wind farm. The second to look more specifically at the wind turbine, building upon the lessons of Supergen Wind 1. In the third and fourth years of the project, the results of these two Themes will feed into a third Gathering Theme, which will consider the wind farm as a power station looking at how the power station should be designed, operated and maintained for optimum reliability and what the overall economics will be.

Offshore wind energy forms a major part of the UK Government's strategy for reducing CO2 emissions and combating climate change. However, the technology is still rapidly evolving and, while onshore turbine availability is high, the cost of individual foundations offshore is driving designers towards ever-larger machines for this market with consequently uncertain reliability levels. The underpinning research proposed by the Supergen Wind 2 Consortium will help to achieve safer, more reliable installations to the benefit of the wind energy industry, the electric power utilities and grid operators, the electricity consumer, Government policy makers, and the environment. Beyond this collective impact, the individual work packages can be said to target more well-defined clusters of beneficiaries as follows: The work on improved estimates of offshore wind resource will benefit the wind energy industry in terms of enabling better siting, but also other ocean users in terms of the understanding of wind conditions. The programme on wakes and aerodynamics is specifically aimed at wind farm developers so that they can optimise the placement of turbines within an offshore wind array and better understand the impact of one wind farm on another nearby. Success in this area would mean more economic wind farm installations with knock-on effects in terms of energy cost and operational reliability. Research on the impact of wind turbines on radar systems is targeted at other ocean users who need to navigate round or through the wind farm. The reduction/removal of false echoes and blindness areas will improve effectiveness of harbour/coastguard authorities, air/sea rescue, and general marine navigation. The development of improved wind turbine controllers will facilitate turbine designers in the trend towards larger machine sizes (which optimise the use of expensive offshore foundations). The work is also aimed at enabling operators to optimise the output of the wind turbine depending on set point output, position in array, or when operating under part-load due to a fault condition. The improved flexibility of operation will benefit the commercial operator, the network operator, and the end-consumer of electricity. Structural analysis tools for rotor-wind field interaction will enable the better understanding of loads and load transfer within the blades, drive train, gearbox (if present), bearings, nacelle and tower. There are impacts in terms of the specification and use of materials, more accurate load definition (essential benefit for component suppliers), and turbine operation - with consequent benefits to manufacturers and operators. Work on turbine blade and tower materials and materials processing techniques is particularly relevant to blade and wind turbine manufacturers, of which several are represented within the project. Through Strathclyde, the Consortium is deeply involved in the Energy Technology Institute (ETI) programme on offshore wind energy. While the ETI projects are aimed at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 3-6, the Supergen Wind 2 programme is specifically aimed at TRL 1-3, thereby providing much of the underpinning basic research required by the ETI projects. An integrated, web-enabled Condition Monitoring package will be developed in Theme 3 that will be capable of collecting data from offshore wind farm SCADA systems, assessing it using fault detection algorithms developed by Durham and other partners, and returning information to commercial partners/subscribers so that maintenance requirements can be addressed in a timely manner. This tool has high potential to improve the operating economics of offshore wind turbines with benefits to commercial operators and all users of the electricity network. The requirement for fewer, well-scheduled maintenance visits will also help reduce the incidence of injuries/fatalities from statistical considerations but also because visits can be scheduled during calmer weather.