Abstract
Abstract. Wind turbine blade leading edge erosion (LEE) is a potentially significant source of revenue loss for wind farm operators. Thus, it is important to advance understanding of the underlying causes, to generate geospatial estimates of erosion potential to provide guidance in pre-deployment planning, and ultimately to advance methods to mitigate this effect and extend blade lifetimes. This study focuses on the second issue and presents a novel approach to characterizing the erosion potential across the contiguous USA based solely on publicly available data products from the National Weather Service dual-polarization radar. The approach is described in detail and illustrated using six locations distributed across parts of the USA that have substantial wind turbine deployments. Results from these locations demonstrate the high spatial variability in precipitation-induced erosion potential, illustrate the importance of low-probability high-impact events to cumulative annual total kinetic energy transfer and emphasize the importance of hail as a damage vector.
Highlights
In 2017 wind turbines (WTs) provided 6 % of total electricity generation in the United States of America (USA) (U.S Energy Information Administration, 2018) and there are over 50 000 WTs operating in the USA today (Pryor et al, 2019)
Given the importance of precipitation phase, size and intensity during WT operation to the potential for blade leading edge erosion (LEE), here we focus on developing a consistent and generalizable framework that can be applied to derive estimates of erosion-relevant atmospheric properties
Precipitation rates of < 5 mm h−1 are common at all sites; rainfall rate (RR) of 20 mm h−1 are experienced at all locations, but only the site in Texas (KMAF) exhibits any occurrence of rainfall intensity in excess of 35 mm h−1
Summary
In 2017 wind turbines (WTs) provided 6 % of total electricity generation in the United States of America (USA) (U.S Energy Information Administration, 2018) and there are over 50 000 WTs operating in the USA today (Pryor et al, 2019). Excess LEE may be costing the industry tens of millions of dollars per year via lost revenue and/or increased maintenance costs and poses a threat to achieving continuing wind energy cost reductions (Sareen et al, 2014) In response to this issue a major industrial research consortium from Europe (including DNV GL, Vestas and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy) has recently (November 2018) announced a new partnership (COBRA) focused on the analysis of mitigation measures for LEE including the development of next-generation leading-edge protection systems (Durakovic, 2019). To describe the degree to which blade LEE is episodic and amendable to the mitigation strategy proposed earlier in research from Denmark of WT curtailment during “highly erosive” periods The efficacy of this strategy is a function of (i) the wind speed regime and joint probability distributions of erosive events (heavy rain or hail) and power-producing wind speeds, (ii) the price of electricity supplied to the grid and (iii) O&M costs. A cost–benefit analysis based on conditions in Denmark suggested that the loss of revenue from the curtailment of power production was small compared to the economic benefits from enhanced blade lifetimes (Bech et al, 2018)
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