Abstract
Our motivation for investigating the rain and wind climate in the Danish Seas is recent news on leading edge erosion on wind turbine blades at several offshore wind farms. The costs related to turbine blade repair are high. In this study we investigate the rain and wind climate at five coastal and three inland weather stations in Denmark. The coastal stations have much higher frequency of heavy rain than inland stations, in high wind conditions. The hypothesis is that leading edge erosion mainly develops during these few extreme events. The leading edge erosion rates and expected lifetime are calculated assuming similar turbines to be in operation at the eight site. The results of two damage increment models show similar results for the coastal stations but differ for two out of three inland sites. The kinetic energy model shows four times high erosion rates at the coastal sites versus the two inland sites. The accumulated rain model shows site independent erosion. The expected life is on average 3 years of the two damage models. The erosion safe mode control, i.e. reduced wind turbine tip speed during extreme rain events, is presented with relative profit from 2.8 to 4.8%.
Highlights
Meteorology for wind energy focuses on wind observations and wind modelling
To assess the rain and wind climate, this study focuses on recent 16 years environmental conditions on rain and wind based on the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) weather station data in Denmark
The present study focuses on quantifying the rain and wind climate nearby selected Danish offshore wind farm locations
Summary
Meteorology for wind energy focuses on wind observations and wind modelling. The wind speed and wind directions are typically observed during one or more years at a prospected site. No information about the rain climate is collected. The motivation for investigating the rain climate for wind energy is the recent focus on wind turbine blade leading edge erosion (LEE) [3]. The LEE both occur on wind turbines offshore and onshore. There has been news on high repair costs related to LEE at several offshore wind farms [4,5]. The relationship between LEE, rain and tip speed is being established through testing in laboratories using rain erosion tester [6e8]. The rain erosion tester mimics the processes occurring in nature in controlled, accelerated ways. The complete interplay between drop sizes, tip speeds and materials is a novel research field with limited quantitative facts to count on
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