Comprehensive Analysis of the Impact of the Icing of Wind Turbine Blades on Power Loss in Cold Regions

Abstract

Blade icing often occurs on wind turbines in cold climates. Blade icing has many adverse effects on wind turbines, and the loss of output power is one of the most important effects. With the increasing emphasis on clean energy around the world, the design and production of wind turbines tend to be large-scale. So this paper selected the 15 MW wind turbine provided by NREL (American Renewable Energy Laboratory) to study the influence of blade icing on output power. In this paper, a multi-program coupled analysis method named CFD-WTIC-ILM (CFD: Computational fluid dynamics; WTIC: Wind Turbine Integrated Calculation; ILM: Ice loss method) was proposed to analyze the whole machine wind turbine. Firstly, Fensap-ice was used to simulate the icing of the wind turbine blades, and then the icing results were input into WTIC for the integrated calculation and analysis of the wind turbine. Then, the WTIC calculation results were used to simulate SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) data and input into ILM to calculate the power loss. Finally, this paper analyzed the comprehensive influence of icing on output power. The calculation results show that the ice mainly accumulates on the windward side of the blade. Icing has a great influence on the aerodynamic characteristics of the airfoil, leading to a significant decrease in the power curve. The rated wind speed is pushed from 10.59 m/s to 13 m/s. The power loss of the wind turbine in the wind speed optimization stage is as high as 37.48%, and the annual power loss rate caused by icing can reach at least 22%.