Assessing Consequences of Wind Turbine Active Power Control

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This project aims to provide Canada's leading wind energy test site with the analysis tools needed to explorenew strategies for wind farm operation. The Wind Energy Institute of Canada (WEICan) owns and operates a10 MW wind farm for power production and research purposes. A growing research interest is in active powercontrol, where turbine power output is adjusted on an ongoing basis to meet the fluctuating needs of the localelectricity system. If wind farm output can be adjusted to help match minute-by-minute changes in demand orother generation, then wind farms can actually assist with stability of the power grid. However, changing awind turbine's operation runs the risk of introducing additional structural loads and increasing wear and tear,ultimately reducing wind farm lifetime or increasing operating costs. Exploring active power control thereforerequires a better understanding of the potential consequences. This is all the more true for a research institutionsuch as WEICan, which has interest in experimenting with new and innovative control strategies. To addressthis, the UPEI team will develop simulation models of WEICan's wind turbines. These models will be tuned incollaboration with WEICan based on measurements of the existing turbines, and then put through differentscenarios that WEICan has interest in experimenting with. By analysing the simulation results in terms of windturbines forces and deflections, we can estimate the consequences on wind turbine health from variousoperating strategies and under a range of environmental conditions. Ultimately, these results, and the newlydeveloped models used to produce them, will give WEICan insight into what active power control scenarios itcan safely explore with its turbines, enabling future exploration and demonstration of novel wind turbineoperating strategies.