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Project

OPTIMAL CONTROL OF WIND FARMS FOR POWER OPTIMIZATION AND LOAD REDUCTION

The research focuses on the formulation of efficient and fast optimal control methods for wind farm control based on coupled flow structural models of wind farms and wind turbines. This requires the development of accurate adjoint formulations for the nonlinear multibody turbine structural model in SP-Wind as well adjoint formulations for the multi-rate time stepping procedure that couples flow and structural models. Moreover, proper regularization approaches need to be developed for the objective gradients, as numerical errors in the flow model can contaminate the gradients in the structural model in the multiscale coupling approach. Finally, appropriate quasi-Newton or thrust-region optimization methods need to be developed that allow to escape local minima that are abundant in this type of optimization problems. Based on these new numerical methodologies, the research further focusses on the inclusion of fatigue loading in wind-farm optimal control studies, allowing to explore potential benevolent interaction between turbulence, control and structural loading of turbines in a wind farm.

Date:15 Nov 2019 →  15 Nov 2023
Keywords:optimal control, wind energy, turbulence
Disciplines:Other physical sciences not elsewhere classified, Wind energy
Project type:PhD project