Feasibility study of offshore wind turbine substructures for southwest offshore wind farm project in Korea

Korea has huge potential for offshore wind energy and the first Korean offshore wind farm has been initiated off the southwest coast. With increasing water depth, different substructures of the offshore wind turbine, such as the jacket and multipile, are the increasing focus of attention because they appear to be cost-effective. However, these substructures are still in the early stages of development in the offshore wind industry. The aim of the present study was to design a suitable substructure, such as a jacket or multipile, to support a 5 MW wind turbine in 33 m deep water for the Korean Southwest Offshore Wind Farm. This study also aimed to compare the dynamic responses of different substructures including the monopile, jacket and multipile and evaluate their feasibility. We therefore performed an eigenanalysis and a coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic simulation under deterministic and stochastic conditions in the environmental conditions in Korea. The results showed that the designed jacket and multipile substructures, together with the modified monopile, were well located at soft–stiff intervals, where most modern utility-scale wind turbine support structures are designed. The dynamic responses of the different substructures showed that of the three substructures, the performance of the jacket was very good. In addition, considering the simple configuration of the multipile, which results in lower manufacturing cost, this substructure can provide another possible solution for Korean’s first offshore wind farm. This study provides knowledge that can be applied for the deployment of large-scale offshore wind turbines in intermediate water depths in Korea.     

Toward performance-based evaluation for offshore wind turbine jacket support structures

This paper introduces a framework for the assessment of damage of offshore wind turbines (OWTs) supported by jackets under extreme environmental loadings. Performance levels/damage states, ranging from operational/undamaged to near collapse/severely damaged, are defined based on static pushover analyses. An example performance assessment is presented for an OWT supported by a jacket based on environmental conditions for a site off Massachusetts along U.S. Atlantic coast. The environmental conditions are characterized based on two methods for estimating wind and wave conditions, one on extrapolation of NOAA buoy measurements and one on a stochastic hurricane catalog, and two models for extreme wave height, one on the crest height and one on the zero-up-crossing height. Using probabilistic models for demands and capacities, two curves of fragility, one estimating the initiation of yielding and the other estimating the onset of collapse, are developed to distinguish between the three damage states. The curves are applied to four combinations of two environmental hazard models and two extreme wave height models, and significant differences are found in the probability of damage among the four combinations of models. The findings have potential implications for the evaluation of the overall risk profile and associated performance for offshore wind farms.     

Natural frequency degradation and permanent accumulated rotation for offshore wind turbine monopiles in clay

Offshore wind turbine (OWT) monopile foundations are subjected to cyclic loading from wind, waves, and operational loads from rotating blades. Lateral monopile capacity can be significantly affected by cyclic loading, causing failure at cyclic load amplitudes lower than the failure load under monotonic loading. For monopiles in clay, undrained clay behavior under short-term cyclic soil-pile loading (e.g. extreme storm conditions) typically includes plastic soil deformation resulting from reductions in soil modulus and undrained shear strength which occur as a function of pore pressure build-up. These impacts affect the assessment of the ultimate and serviceability limit states of OWTs via natural frequency degradation and accumulated permanent rotation at the mudline, respectively. This paper introduced novel combinations of existing p-y curve design methods and compared the impact of short-term cyclic loading on monopiles in soft, medium, and stiff clay. The results of this paper indicate that short-term cyclic loading from extreme storm conditions are unlikely to significantly affect natural frequency and permanent accumulated rotation for OWT monopiles in stiff clays, but monopiles in soft clay may experience significant degradation. Further consideration is required for medium clays, as load magnitude played a strong role in both natural frequency and permanent rotation estimation.     

Investigating the aerodynamic performance of a model offshore floating wind turbine

Understanding the impact of wave-induced dynamic effects on the aerodynamic performance of Offshore Floating Wind Turbines (OFWTs) is crucial towards developing cost-effective floating wind turbines to harness wind energy in deep water sites. The complexity of the wake of an OFWT has not yet been fully understood. Measurements and numerical simulations are essential. An experiment to investigate the aerodynamics of a model OFWT was undertaken at the University of Malta. Established experimental techniques used to analyse fixed HAWTs were applied and modified for the floating turbine condition. The effects of wave induced motions on the rotor aerodynamic variables were analysed in detail. An open source free-wake vortex code was also used to examine whether certain phenomena observed in the experiments could be reproduced numerically by the lifting line method. Results from hot wire measurements and free-wake vortex simulations have shown that for OFWTs surge-induced torque fluctuations are evident. At high λ a discrepancy in the mean C_P between the fixed and floating conditions was found from measurements and numerical simulations.     

Simplified fatigue load assessment in offshore wind turbine structural analysis

The estimation of fatigue lifetime for an offshore wind turbine support structure requires a large number of time‐domain simulations. It is an important question whether it is possible to reduce the number of load cases while retaining a high level of accuracy of the results. We present a novel method for simplified fatigue load assessments based on statistical regression models that estimate fatigue damage during power production. The main idea is to predict the total fatigue damage only and not also the individual damage values for each load case. We demonstrate the method for a jacket‐type support structure. Reducing the number of simulated load cases from 21 to 3, the total fatigue damage estimate exhibited a maximum error of about 6% compared with the complete assessment. As a consequence, a significant amount of simulation time can be saved, in the order of a factor of seven. This quick fatigue assessment is especially interesting in the application of structural optimization, with a large number of iterations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation of electricity supply of an Atlantic island by offshore wind turbines and wave energy converters associated with a medium scale local energy storage

The problem of sizing an electricity storage for a 5000 inhabitants island supplied by both marine renewables (offshore wind and waves) and the mainland grid is addressed by a case study based on a full year resource and consumption data. Generators, transmission lines and battery storage are accounted for through basic simplified models while the focus is put on electricity import/export budget. Self-sufficiency does not seem a reasonable goal to pursue, but partial autonomy provided by renewable sources and a medium size storage would probably be profitable to the island community.     

海上风力发电机组基础的选择

介绍了海上风力发电的发展现状,结合海上采油平台形式,对海上风电机组采用的基础定义、基础类型及其选择进行了介绍。     

Discrepancy study of modal parameters of a scale jacket-type supporting structure of 3.0-MW offshore wind turbine in water and in air

The discrepancy of modal parameters of a scale offshore wind turbine is studied by using the proposed assessment method. One theoretical development is that weak genuine modes can be separated from strong noisy modes; and the other is the size of the reconstructed Hankel matrix will not be changed to ensure the comparability of modal parameters from different scenarios. A numerical signal is synthesized to demonstrate the proposed method. Numerical results indicate that the approach can isolate the two genuine modal parameters respectively, by applying estimated pass band with a 2 by 2 Hankel matrix of the Eigensystem Realization Algorithm, which means it can be used as a criterion to assess modal parameters from different scenarios. An experiment with model scale 15 from a 3.0-MW offshore wind turbine is tested. Experimental results indicate that natural frequencies are considerably reduced and damping ratios are increased, with the rate of frequency change varies from 15.33% to 17.97%. The modal parameters obtained in water with waves are close to those obtained in still water even if the structure is excited by a hammer or waves. The modal parameters estimated from the reconstructed responses of different accelerometers are in excellent agreement.     

A GIS-based decision support model for offshore floating wind turbine installation

This paper presents a decision support model that assesses offshore suitability for floating wind turbine installation. The model is based on Multi-Criteria Analysis and Geographic Information Systems. An implementation of the model for the Aegean Sea is also presented. The methodological approach followed consists of four stages. The first stage excludes sites that are inappropriate for wind turbine siting based on legislative constraints. At the second stage, a set of evaluation criteria are used in order to identify the most suitable areas for floating wind turbine installation. Next stage is the economic evaluation of the highest-scored sites, as they resulted from final suitability map. Finally, a sensitivity analysis on the weights of the criteria is carried out. Results indicated that only a small percentage of the case study is characterised as appropriate for floating wind turbine siting, although wind potential is considered strong in more sites.     

Short‐term extreme response analysis of a jacket supporting an offshore wind turbine

Wind turbines must be designed in such a way that they can survive in extreme environmental conditions. Therefore, it is important to accurately estimate the extreme design loads. This paper deals with a recently proposed method for obtaining short‐term extreme values for the dynamic responses of offshore fixed wind turbines. The 5 MW NREL wind turbine is mounted on a jacket structure (92 m high) at a water depth of 70 m at a northern offshore site in the North Sea. The hub height is 67 m above tower base or top of the jacket, i.e. 89 m above mean water level. The turbine response is numerically obtained by using the aerodynamic software HAWC2 and the hydrodynamic software USFOS . Two critical responses are discussed, the base shear force and the bending moment at the bottom of the jacket. The extreme structural responses are considered for wave‐induced and wind‐induced loads for a 100 year return‐period harsh metocean condition with a 14.0 m significant wave height, a 16 s peak spectral period, a 50 m s ^{? 1} (10 min average) wind speed (at the hub) and a turbulence intensity of 0.1 for a parked wind turbine. After performing the 10 min nonlinear dynamic simulations, a recently proposed extrapolation method is used for obtaining the extreme values of those responses over a period of 3 h. The sensitivity of the extremes to sample size is also studied. The extreme value statistics are estimated from the empirical mean upcrossing rates. This method together with other frequently used methods (i.e. the Weibull tail method and the global maxima method) is compared with the 3 h extreme values obtained directly from the time‐domain simulations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A study of modal damping for offshore wind turbines considering soil properties and foundation types

The modal damping ratio for each mode is crucial to characterize the dynamic behavior of offshore wind turbines and widely used by simulation software in wind turbine engineering, such as Bladed and FAST. In this study, modal damping ratios of offshore wind turbines are systematically studied for different soil properties and foundation types. Firstly, the modal damping ratios and modal frequencies for the first and second modes of a gravity foundation–supported offshore wind turbine are studied. An offshore wind turbine supported by a monopile foundation is then investigated to clarify the characteristics of modal damping ratios and modal frequencies for the monopile foundation. The soil parameters are identified by means of genetic algorithm (GA). Predicted modal damping ratios and modal frequencies as well as modal shapes show good agreement with the field measurements for both foundations. Finally, a sensitivity analysis study is carried out to investigate the effects of soil properties and foundation types on modal damping ratios. For the gravity foundation–supported offshore wind turbine, soil properties affect the modal damping ratio of the second mode largely, but affect that of the first mode little, while for the monopile‐supported offshore wind turbine, soil properties affect the modal damping ratios of the first and second modes significantly. Predicted natural periods and modal damping ratios of the first mode for both foundations by a pair of simple models agree well with those by numerical models.     

Wave disturbance rejection for monopile offshore wind turbines

The dimensions of offshore wind turbine (OWT) support structures are governed by fatigue considerations. For 6‐ to 10‐MW OWTs, wave loads are often dominating in terms of fatigue utilization. The present work proposes a control scheme to reduce the wave‐induced fatigue loads in OWT support structures. The control scheme applies collective pitch control to increase both the damping and stiffness of the fore‐aft vibration modes. With conventional active tower damping, efficient wave disturbance rejection is restricted to a narrow frequency range around the first fore‐aft modal frequency. The proposed control scheme achieves efficient wave disturbance rejection across a broader frequency range. Here, tower feedback control is implemented via an auxiliary control loop. Based on a low‐fidelity model, the effect of the tower feedback loop on the stability margins of the basic controller is analysed. The results show that, within certain boundaries, the stability margins are improved by the stiffness term in the tower feedback loop. Consequently, the need to reduce the bandwidth of the basic controller to accommodate tower feedback control is relaxed. Based on time‐domain simulations carried out in an aero‐hydro‐servo‐elastic simulation tool, the lifetime effects of the proposed control scheme are analysed. Compared with conventional active tower damping, a more favourable trade‐off between adverse side effects and the support structure's fatigue damage is achieved with the proposed control scheme.     

Techno-economic feasibility of fleets of far offshore hydrogen-producing wind energy converters

Innovative solutions need to be developed for harvesting wind energy far offshore. They necessarily involve on-board energy storage because grid-connection would be prohibitively expensive. Hydrogen is one of the most promising solutions. However, it is well-known that it is challenging to store and transport hydrogen which may have a critical impact on the delivered hydrogen cost.In this paper, it is shown that there are vast areas far offshore where wind power is both characterized by high winds and limited seasonal variations. Capturing a fraction of this energy could provide enough energy to cover the forecast global energy demand for 2050. Thus, scenarios are proposed for the exploitation of this resource by fleets of hydrogen-producing wind energy converters sailing autonomously. The scenarios include transportation and distribution of the produced hydrogen.The delivered hydrogen cost is estimated for the various scenarios in the short term and in the longer term. Cost estimates are derived using technical and economic data available in the literature and assumptions for the cost of electricity available on-board the wind energy converters. In the shorter term, delivered cost estimates are in the range 7.1–9.4 €/kg depending on the scenario and the delivery distance. They are based on the assumption of on-board electricity cost at 0.08€/kWh. In the longer term, assuming an on-board electricity cost at 0.04€.kWh, the cost estimates could reduce to 3.5 to 5.7 €/kg which would make the hydrogen competitive on several hydrogen markets without any support mechanism. For the hydrogen to be competitive on all hydrogen markets including the ones with the highest GHG emissions, a carbon tax of approximately 200 €/kg would be required.     

Load case reduction for offshore wind turbine support structure fatigue assessment by importance sampling with two‐stage filtering

A complete fatigue assessment for operational conditions for offshore wind turbines involves simulating thousands of environmental states. For applications such as optimization, where this assessment needs to be repeated many times, that presents a significant computational problem. Here, we propose a novel way of reducing the number of simulated environmental states (load cases) while maintaining an acceptable accuracy. From one full fatigue analysis of a base design, the OC3 monopile (with the NREL 5MW turbine), the distribution of fatigue damage per load case can be used to estimate the lifetime fatigue damage of a range of modified designs. Using importance sampling and a specially adapted two‐stage filtering procedure, we obtain pseudo‐optimal sets of load cases from which the fatigue damage is estimated. This is applied to seven different designs that have been modified to emulate iterations of an optimization loop. For several of these designs, sampling less than 1% of all load cases can give damage estimates with median errors of less than 2%. Even for the most severe cases, using 3% of the environmental states yields a maximum error of 10%. While further refinement is possible, the method is considered viable for applications within design optimization and preliminary design.     

The simulation error caused by input loading variability in offshore wind turbine structural analysis

Stochastic representations of turbulent wind and irregular waves are used in time domain simulations of offshore wind turbines. The variability due to finite sampling of this input loading is an important source of simulation error. For the OC4 reference jacket structure with a 5 MW wind turbine, an error of 12–34% for ultimate loads and 6–12% for fatigue loads can occur with a probability of 1%, for simulations with a total simulation length of 60 min and various load cases. In terms of fatigue life, in the worst case, the lifetime of a joint was thereby overestimated by 29%. The size of this error can be critical, i.e., ultimate or fatigue limits can be exceeded, with probability depending on the choice of number of random seeds and simulation length. The analysis is based on a large simulation study with about 30,000 time domain simulations. Probability density functions of response variables are estimated and analyzed in terms of confidence intervals; i.e., how probable it is to obtain results significantly different from the expected value when using a finite number of simulations. This simulation error can be reduced to the same extent, either using several short simulations with different stochastic representations of the wind field or one long simulation with corresponding total length of the wind field. When using several short‐term simulations, it is important that ultimate and fatigue loads are calculated based on the complete, properly combined set of results, in order to prevent a systematic bias in the estimated loads. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulating offshore hydrogen production via PEM electrolysis using real power production data from a 2.3 MW floating offshore wind turbine

This work presents simulation results from a system where offshore wind power is used to produce hydrogen via electrolysis. Real-world data from a 2.3 MW floating offshore wind turbine and electricity price data from Nord Pool were used as input to a novel electrolyzer model. Data from five 31-day periods were combined with six system designs, and hydrogen production, system efficiency, and production cost were estimated. A comparison of the overall system performance shows that the hydrogen production and cost can vary by up to a factor of three between the cases. This illustrates the uncertainty related to the hydrogen production and profitability of these systems. The highest hydrogen production achieved in a 31-day period was 17 242 kg using a 1.852 MW electrolyzer (i.e., utilization factor of approximately 68%), the lowest hydrogen production cost was 4.53 $/kg H₂, and the system efficiency was in the range 56.1–56.9% in all cases.     

Active tuned mass damper for damping of offshore wind turbine vibrations

An active tuned mass damper (ATMD) is employed for damping of tower vibrations of fixed offshore wind turbines, where the additional actuator force is controlled using feedback from the tower displacement and the relative velocity of the damper mass. An optimum tuning procedure equivalent to the tuning procedure of the passive tuned mass damper combined with a simple procedure for minimizing the control force is employed for determination of optimum damper parameters and feedback gain values. By time domain simulations conducted in an aeroelastic code, it is demonstrated that the ATMD can be used to further reduce the structural response of the wind turbine compared with the passive tuned mass damper and this without an increase in damper mass. A limiting factor of the design of the ATMD is the displacement of the damper mass, which for the ATMD, increases to compensate for the reduction in mass. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maximum thermodynamic power coefficient of a wind turbine

According to the centenary Betz‐Joukowsky law, the power extracted from a wind turbine in open flow cannot exceed 16/27 of the wind transported kinetic energy rate. This limit is usually interpreted as an absolute theoretical upper bound for the power coefficient of all wind turbines, but it was derived in the special case of incompressible fluids. Following the same steps of Betz classical derivation, we model the turbine as an actuator disk in a one dimensional fluid flow but consider the general case of a compressible reversible fluid, such as air. In doing so, we are obliged to use not only the laws of mechanics but also and explicitly the laws of thermodynamics. We show that the power coefficient depends on the inlet wind Mach number , and that its maximum value exceeds the Betz‐Joukowsky limit. We have developed a series expansion for the maximum power coefficient in powers of the Mach number that unifies all the cases (compressible and incompressible) in the same simple expression: .     

Evaluation of internal force superposition on a TLP for wind turbines

The offshore wind resources globally present a great opportunity for green power generation. Both types, fixed and floating foundations, will play a major role in utilizing these resources. The preliminary design of the floating system called GICON^®-Tension Leg Platform (TLP) is meant to provide a solution for harnessing the power of offshore wind at water depths between 20 m and 350 m. In addition a design for water depth up to 700 m is currently under development. The research project is a joint development of private industry and academic institutions. The main partners are ESG GmbH and Technische Universität Freiberg. Currently ongoing research includes the comparison of calculated data with experimental data obtained by wave tank experiments with a scale model at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) in June 2013. These tests have provided insights regarding the dynamic characteristics of the GICON^®-TLP by analyzing the system's response to different load cases. Furthermore, the results of the scale model tests at MARIN have confirmed that a superposition of the internal forces for wind and wave loads can be assumed for the structural design. This can be traced back to the stiffness of the mooring line system and the innovative mooring line configuration.