The Science of Making Torque from Wind

Abstract

Wind energy has for many years been the fastest developing energy source. This is most easily demonstrated by some numbers. In 2006 a total of about 7.6 GW of new wind energy capacity was installed in Europe, an increase of more than 20% over the year before. Europe's cumulative wind power capacity has now reached more than 50 GW. At the beginning of 2007, the European Commission published its new energy strategy, which recommends a 20% target for the share of renewable energy in the EU by 2020. New initiatives have also been launched in the U.S. and Asia to comply with the need for a reduction in the emissions of CO2 and to create a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. Since 1980 the average size of wind turbines has grown by a factor of 100 from 50 kW to today's 5 MW machines. This enormous increase in size would not have been possible without the involvement of well-educated engineers and scientists. Research institutions and universities have contributed significantly to this development by providing basic knowledge as well as sophisticated software and measuring campaigns. In order to comply with the fast development in wind turbine technology there is a growing need for both well-educated scientists and for a further development of sophisticated predictive tools. For many years progress in technology development was presented at the European Wind Energy Conference (EWEC) conference organized by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). Because of the maturity of the industry and the many important topics involved in the continued development of wind power, the relative share of the technical and scientific sessions at EWEC has decreased dramatically. Hence it was desirable to find an alternative forum for the exchange of ideas and techniques within more specialized topics. As a consequence the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE) was created in 2003 in order to support education and research. It is the intention of this special topics conference to bring together scientists and engineers working in the fields of aerodynamics, aeroelasticity, aeroacoustics, aeroelastic control, wind conditions and wind farms.The first conference entitled `The Science of making Torque from Wind' was organized by DUWIND and held at Delft University, 19-21 April 2004. Owing to the great success of this conference where more than 60 papers were presented, we decided to follow it with a similar conference at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Lyngby. It is our hope that others will take up the idea and continue this series of conferences. An explicit objective of the conference is to meet the high standards applied in several other branches of science and technology. The EAWE has the responsibility for the scientific quality of the content. All papers presented at the conference have had an abstract review as well as a full paper review by at least two reviewers. Out of the approximately 120 submitted abstracts, 86 papers were finally approved to be presented at the conference. It is expected that many of the papers will subsequently be published in scientific journals. Toward that end, the editors of Wind Energy and Journal of Solar Energy Engineering have expressed their interest in letting the most promising papers be subjected to a second review, for the purpose of having them published as journal papers. The EWEA staff is thanked for organizing the PR on the conference and the EAWE board members for valuable help in the reviewing process and for delivering session chairmen. Staff members at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at DTU and Risø were responsible for the organization. Special thanks go to DTU for providing lecture and meeting rooms, and to LM Glasfiber, Vestas Wind Systems and Siemens Wind Power for financial support. Jens Nørkær Sørensen, Conference Chairman 21 June 2007