Abstract
A field campaign was carried out to investigate ice accretion features on large turbine blades (50 m in length) and to assess power output losses of utility-scale wind turbines induced by ice accretion. After a 30-h icing incident, a high-resolution digital camera carried by an unmanned aircraft system was used to capture photographs of iced turbine blades. Based on the obtained pictures of the frozen blades, the ice layer thickness accreted along the blades’ leading edges was determined quantitatively. While ice was found to accumulate over whole blade spans, outboard blades had more ice structures, with ice layers reaching up to 0.3 m thick toward the blade tips. With the turbine operating data provided by the turbines’ supervisory control and data acquisition systems, icing-induced power output losses were investigated systematically. Despite the high wind, frozen turbines were discovered to rotate substantially slower and even shut down from time to time, resulting in up to 80% of icing-induced turbine power losses during the icing event. The research presented here is a comprehensive field campaign to characterize ice accretion features on full-scaled turbine blades and systematically analyze detrimental impacts of ice accumulation on the power generation of utility-scale wind turbines. The research findings are very useful in bridging the gaps between fundamental icing physics research carried out in highly idealized laboratory settings and the realistic icing phenomena observed on utility-scale wind turbines operating in harsh natural icing conditions.
Highlights
A field campaign was carried out to investigate ice accretion features on large turbine blades (50 m in length) and to assess power output losses of utility-scale wind turbines induced by ice accretion
In this brief report we present the measurement results of a field campaign to quantify the ice accretion features over large turbine blades (50 m in length) and to assess the power losses to the utility-scale wind turbines induced by the ice accretion
This field campaign quantified the ice accumulation features on multimegawatt wind turbines and systematically analyzed detrimental impacts of the ice accumulation on utility-scale wind turbine power generation
Summary
Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines. A field campaign was carried out to investigate ice accretion features on large turbine blades (50 m in length) and to assess power output losses of utility-scale wind turbines induced by ice accretion. Even though the incoming speed of the surface winds measured at turbine’s hub height during the icing event was relatively high (substantially higher than the turbine’s cut-in speed, as indicated in Fig. 2A), the turbine’s power outputs were found to be quite low in general (Fig. 2B) This implies that the aerodynamic performance of the turbine blades was greatly degraded because of the ice accretion over the blade surfaces [6, 7], and only very limited torques could be generated during the icing occurrence, despite the high wind. This is extremely unfavorable because electricity would be in great demand and have the highest price during winter storms [12], which is highly likely what had happened during the Texas blackout in February 2021
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