Abstract
The prestressed concrete–steel hybrid (PCSH) wind turbine tower, characterized by replacing the lower part of the traditional full-height steel tube wind turbine tower with a prestressed concrete (PC) segment, provides a potential alterative solution to transport difficulties and risks associated with traditional steel towers in mountainous areas. This paper proposes an optimization approach with a parallel updated particle swarm optimization (PUPSO) algorithm which aims at minimizing the objective function of the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of the PCSH wind turbine towers in a life cycle perspective which represents the direct investments, labor costs, machinery costs, and the maintenance costs. Based on the constraints required by relevant specifications and industry standards, the geometry of a PCSH wind turbine tower for a 2 MW wind turbine is optimized using the proposed approach. The dimensions of the PCSH wind turbine tower are treated as optimization variables in the PUPSO algorithm. Results show that the optimized PCSH wind turbine tower can be an economic alternative for wind farms with lower LCOE requirements. In addition, compared with the traditional particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and UPSO algorithm, the proposed PUPSO algorithm can enhance the optimization computation efficiency by about 60–110%.
Highlights
The wind turbine tower, as the structure supporting the wind turbine, represents a highly significant component of wind turbine systems and accounts for approximately30% of the overall investment in onshore installations [1]
The following assumptions are made during the geometry optimization of the prestressed concrete–steel hybrid (PCSH) wind turbine tower in this paper
In the PCSH wind turbine tower, the upper steel part of the tower is made of Q345 steel and the lower prestressed concrete (PC) part is made of C50 concrete
Summary
The wind turbine tower, as the structure supporting the wind turbine, represents a highly significant component of wind turbine systems and accounts for approximately30% of the overall investment in onshore installations [1]. With the increase in unit power capacity of wind turbines, the heights of wind turbine towers have increased for the purpose of capturing wind energy efficiently, as wind profiles are strong and steady at higher elevations [2,3,4]. Many wind farms have been developed or are under construction in mountainous areas in the mainland of China after decades of wind farm development in plain areas. The transportation of segmental steel tubes and long blades to the top of mountains is a challenging task with risks. The construction of temporary transportation roads with large turning radii in mountains leads to additional investment and environmental destruction [6]. The traditional steel-tubular wind turbine tower systems are typical soft supporting systems, and it is hard to meet the stiffness requirements of large capacity wind turbines due to the limitation of steel-tube diameter transportation
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