Abstract

Abstract. The present study introduces a new method to characterize ramp-like wind speed fluctuations, including coherent gusts. This method combines two well-known methods: the continuous wavelet transform and the fitting of an analytical form based on the error function. The method provides estimation of ramp amplitude and rise time, and is herein used to statistically characterize ramp-like fluctuations at three different measurement sites. Together with the corresponding amplitude of wind direction change, the ramp amplitude and rise time variables are compared to the extreme coherent gust with direction change from the IEC wind turbine safety standard. From the comparison we find that the observed amplitudes of the estimated fluctuations do not exceed the one prescribed in the standard, but the rise time is generally much longer, on average around 200 s. The direction change does however exceed the one prescribed in the standard several times, but for those events the rise time is a minute or more. We also demonstrate a general pattern in the statistical behaviour of the characteristic ramp variables, noting their wind speed dependence, or lack thereof, at the different sites.

Highlights

  • The IEC wind turbine safety standard prescribes various models of extreme wind conditions that a wind turbine must withstand during its operational lifetime (IEC, 2005)

  • The extreme coherent gust with direction change (ECD) model is presented in Stork et al (1998), but with a rather limited description; the model is not shown compared to measurements, but it is said to represent extreme gusts and direction changes in wind speed measurements “quite well.”

  • In order to characterize the amplitude and rise time of the investigated fluctuations, we provide a new combination of two well-known methods: the continuous wavelet transform and the fitting of an idealized ramp function, which is inspired by detection of atmospheric boundary-layer depth (Steyn et al, 1999)

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Summary

Introduction

The IEC wind turbine safety standard prescribes various models of extreme wind conditions that a wind turbine must withstand during its operational lifetime (IEC, 2005). With the increasing rotor size of modern wind turbines, resent research has focused on how the gust models in the IEC standard are unrealistically represented by a uniform wave (Bierbooms, 2005; Bos et al, 2014) In these studies, gusts are defined as extreme fluctuations of stationary and homogeneous turbulence. The reason is due to the limited length scale of the gusts, and that during the simulations some gusts might even miss the blades as they sweep by the rotor The authors of these studies suggest that the uniform gust models of the IEC standard should be replaced by stochastic gust models. These studies take into consideration fluctuations of larger scales than those of stationary, homogeneous turbulence, i.e. the submesoscale or mesoscale These coherent structures are seen in measurements as ramp-like increases in wind speed that may readily be compared with the ECD due to similar characteristics. We investigate whether the characteristics of the extreme wind speed ramps are comparable with the ECD

Høvsøre
Østerild
Ryningsnäs
Selection and characterization of events
First step: selecting high-variance events
Second step: wavelet transform
Third step: idealized ramp function
Overview of the selection and characterization
IEC extreme coherent gust with direction change
Distributions and comparison with the ECD
Discussion on the detection and characterization method
Discussion of observed distributions
Conclusions
Full Text
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