Development of a floating Vertical Axis Wind Turbine for the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

Differently from Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs), which are the reference technologies in the wind market for their reliability and maturity, Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) applications are related to small-scale contexts, such as providing electricity in isolated areas or urban settings. Consequently, the capacity of VAWTs results significantly lower than the order of megawatts and does not exceed a few tens of kilowatts. A promising field of application for VAWTs is the floating offshore: among the main advantages there are an increased static stability, by placing the rotor-nacelle assembly (RNA) at the base of the VAWT and reduced operational and maintenance (O&M) costs. Moreover, the different wake dynamics allows to reduce the aerodynamic losses, allowing closer turbine installations. However, to be competitive with floating HAWTs, it is necessary to have numerical models for the analysis and simulation of multi-megawatt VAWTs. This paper aims to introduce a time domain model of a floating vertical axis wind turbine, developed within the Matlab-Simscape environment. The model comprises an aerodynamics module, based on Double Multiple Stream Tube theory while hydrodynamics is modelled using WEC-Sim. A case study, involving a Darrieus H-rotor VAWT tested in the Mediterranean Sea and supported by a semi-sub foundation, the OC4-DeepCwind, is introduced. The results obtained are compared with those from QBlade, an software developed by TU Berlin, demonstrating a good agreement between the two codes.