Abstract
Leading-edge erosion at wind turbine blades cause a loss in profit for wind farm owners, in particular offshore. The characterization of the rain erosion environmental load at wind turbine blades is based on the long-term rain rate and wind speed observations at 10-minute resolutions at coastal stations around the North Sea, Baltic Sea, and inland. It is assumed that an IEA Wind 15 MW turbine is installed at each station. The leading-edge lifetime is found to increase from the South to the North along the German and Danish North Sea coastline from 1.4 to 2.8 years. In the Danish and German Baltic Sea, the lifetime in the West is shorter (~2 years) than further East (~3 to 4 years). It is recommended to use a time series of 10 years or longer because shorter time series most likely will cause an overestimation of the lifetime. The loss in profit due to leading-edge erosion can potentially be reduced by ~70% using the erosion-safe mode, i.e., reduce the tip speed during heavy rain events, to reduce blade erosion, aerodynamic loss, repair costs, and downtime during repair. The aerodynamic loss for the 18 stations is on average 0.46% of the annual energy production.
Highlights
Rainfall is the main damage factor for leading edge erosion (LEE) of wind turbine blades [1,2]
The results from the analysis on the spatial variability of the rain environmental load were presented for three domains: The North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and inland stations
As an example for Aalborg, we see that the rain rate of 10 mm h−1 occurred 0.05% of the time when it rains, while 10 mm h−1 occurred around 0.008% of the time when it rains and wind speeds were equal to or greater than 7 m s−1
Summary
Rainfall is the main damage factor for leading edge erosion (LEE) of wind turbine blades [1,2]. Rain events occurring during times with high tip speeds cause the most LEE [1,7,8,9]. Future offshore turbines may operate with even higher tip speeds than current turbines because of their longer blades. Higher tip speed could cause faster occurrence of LEE. At some offshore wind farms, the repair of turbine blades takes place after two years [10] and five years in service [11] and the repair cost is high [12]. A.-M.; Skrzypiński, W.R.; Hasager, C.B. Effect of drop-size parametrization and rain amount on blade-lifetime calculations considering leadindg-edge erosion.
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