Wind turbine power curves incorporating turbulence intensity

The performance of a wind turbine in terms of power production (the power curve) is important to the wind energy industry. The current International Electrotechnical Commission 61400‐12‐1 standard for power curve evaluation recognizes only the mean wind speed at hub height and the air density as relevant to the power production. However, numerous studies have shown that the power production depends on several variables, in particular turbulence intensity. This paper presents a model and a method that are computationally tractable and able to account for some of the influence of turbulence intensity on the power production. The model and method are parsimonious in the sense that only a single function (the zero‐turbulence power curve) and a single auxiliary parameter (the equivalent turbulence factor) are needed to predict the mean power at any desired turbulence intensity. The method requires only 10 min statistics but can be applied to data of a higher temporal resolution as well. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.