Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Land-based Wind”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 163 records · Page 9
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

A symbolic framework to obtain mid-fidelity models of flexible multibody systems with application to horizontal-axis wind turbines

Abstract. The article presents a symbolic framework (also called computer algebra program) that is used to obtain, in symbolic mathematical form, the linear and nonlinear equations of motion of a mid-fidelity multibody system including rigid and flexible bodies. Our approach is based on Kane's method and a nonlinear shape function representation for flexible bodies. The shape function approach does not represent the state of the art for flexible multibody dynamics but is an effective trade-off to obtain mid-fidelity models with few degrees of freedom, taking advantage of the separation of space and time. The method yields compact symbolic equations of motion with implicit account of the constraints. The general and automatic framework facilitates the creation and manipulation of models with various levels of complexity by adding or removing degrees of freedom. The symbolic treatment allows for analytical gradients and linearized equations of motion. The linear and nonlinear equations can be exported to Python code or dedicated software. There are multiple applications, such as time domain simulation, stability analyses, frequency domain analyses, advanced controller design, state observers, and digital twins. In this article, we describe the method we used to systematically generate the equations of motion of multibody systems and present the implementation of the framework using the Python package SymPy. We apply the framework to generate illustrative land-based and offshore wind turbine models. We compare our results with OpenFAST simulations and discuss the advantages and limitations of the method. The Python implementation is provided as an open-source project.

Branlard, Emmanuel (ORCID:0000000277506128)↗
DOE OSTI2023

WOMBAT Tutorial

This workshop will provide a comprehensive overview to Windfarm Operations and Maintenance cost-Benefit Analysis Tool (WOMBAT), NREL's first wind O&M software model. The session will discuss how to utilize WOMBAT to answer O&M research questions covering land-based, offshore, and distributed wind farms. It will offer an introduction to the model and how it operates. The team will then offer a demonstration of the various modeling parameters by converting the CORE Wind Floating Wind Strategies O&M Assessment assumptions into an analysis-ready configuration, diving into the results, and exploring further model variations.

discrete event simulation↗
DOE OSTI2024

Survey of Utility-Scale Wind and Solar Developers Report [Slides]

In 2023, Berkeley Lab conducted the first of its kind survey of industry professionals with direct experience working in community engagement and permitting of land-based, utility-scale wind and solar energy facilities in the U.S. The survey solicited information about project timelines over the last five years, leading causes of project delays and cancelations, community opposition, experience with permitting authorities, community engagement, comparisons between wind and solar, and other related topics. A total of 123 individuals responded to the survey for a response rate of 19.2%. Respondents were employed at 62 unique companies, which together are responsible for approximately half of the wind and solar developed from 2016 to 2023.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Wind Energy Accomplishments & Midyear Performance Report: Fiscal Year 2022

2022 marks 43 years of innovation through the National Wind Technology Center at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Flatirons Campus. Scientists, engineers, analysts, and researchers continue to build on NREL's legacy of innovation at this world-class hub for wind energy technology research and development. Today, the nation's goals to tackle climate change and revitalize the U.S. economy through increased investment in clean energy - particularly in land-based, offshore, and distributed wind energy - are more ambitious than ever. From advancing wind energy science, technologies, and materials to demonstrating thought leadership on a worldwide scale, NREL's Wind Energy Program played a powerful role in maximizing the impact of wind energy in the first half of Fiscal Year (FY) 2022. NREL's technical expertise, research capabilities, and industry understanding continued to support DOE's efforts to champion clean energy, addressing market and deployment barriers and driving down costs with more efficient, reliable, and predictable wind energy systems. This report provides an overview of the achievements NREL made on behalf of DOE's Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO) and other partners between October 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022.

accomplishments↗
DOE OSTI2024

Investigating the interactions between wakes and floating wind turbines using FAST.Farm

As floating offshore wind progresses to commercial maturity, wake and array effects across a farm of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) will become increasingly important. While wakes of land-based and bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines have been extensively studied, only recently has this topic become relevant for floating turbines. This work presents an investigation of the mutual interaction between the motions of floating wind turbines and wakes using FAST.Farm. While FAST.Farm has been extensively validated across a wide range of conditions, it has never been validated for FOWT applications. Hence, in the first part of this work, we validate FAST.Farm by comparing simulations of a single FOWT against high-fidelity results from large-eddy simulations available in the literature. The validation is based on wake meandering, mean wake deflection, and velocity deficit at different downstream locations. This validation showed that the original axisymmetric (polar) wake model of FAST.Farm overpredicts the vertical wake deflection induced by shaft tilt and floater pitch, while the new curled wake model is capable of properly capturing the vertical wake deflection. In the second part, we use FAST.Farm to analyze a small three-unit array of FOWTs with a spacing of 7 diameters across a wide range of environmental conditions. The same National Renewable Energy Laboratory 5 MW reference wind turbine atop the OC4-DeepCwind semisubmersible is adopted for the three FOWTs and for the validation against high-fidelity simulations. To assess the effect of the floating substructure, we compare the power production, tower-base moments, and blade-root moments obtained for the floating turbines with the results obtained in a fixed-bottom configuration. The main differences introduced by the floating substructure are the motions induced by the waves, the change in the natural frequencies of the tower caused by differences in the boundary condition at its base, and the larger vertical deflection of the wake deficit due to the mean pitch of the platform. The impact of these differences, as well as other minor effects, are analyzed in detail.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
NASA NTRS1992

Definition and preliminary design of the LAWS (Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder), volume 2, phase 2

Accurate knowledge of winds is critical to our understanding of the earth's climate and to our ability to predict climate change. Winds are a fundamental component of highly nonlinear interactions between oceans, land surfaces, and the atmosphere. Interactions at these interfaces are the focus of much climate change research. Although wind information is critical for advancing our understanding, currently most of our description of atmospheric motion is obtained indirectly - i.e., derived from observations of temperature and moisture through geostrophic relationships. Direct measurement of winds over the globe is limited to land-based rawinsonde surface stations and a few ship/aircraft reports. Cloud track winds using satellite imagery are calculated but must be used with great care. The LAWS mission objective, therefore, is to provide diurnal and global direct observations of winds - an observation that will incrementally enhance our knowledge of the earth's climate and physical processes responsible for its change. This document is Volume 2 of the LAWS Phase 2 Final Study Report and describes the definition and preliminary design of the LAWS instrument, together with details of the laser breadboard program conducted during the last 18 months of the program.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2025

Wind Turbine Sound Setbacks and Supply Curves: Ordinances and Extrapolated Trends, 110 Hub Height, 130 Rotor Diameter

This dataset provides a comprehensive set of wind turbine sound setbacks from every residential structure in the contiguous United States (CONUS). A sound setback is defined as the minimum required distance between a residential structure and a hypothetical turbine installation site to ensure that modeled sound levels received at the residence do not exceed local sound ordinances, which are commonly expressed in A-weighted decibels (dBA). Therefore, sound setbacks are a local spatial assessment combining multiple factors, including the sound pressure curve as a function of the observer location (distance and direction) relative to the turbine, local sound regulations, and the geographical distribution of residential structures. The dataset is organized into multiple scenario-based products, detailed as follows: 1. Existing and extrapolated sound setbacks. An existing scenario characterizes sound setbacks only in states or counties that have implemented sound regulations as of 2022. The extrapolated scenarios extend a constant sound threshold to counties that lack explicit sound regulations, with thresholds ranging from 35 to 60 dBA, in 5-dBA increments reflecting the variation observed in current sound ordinances. 2. Sound setbacks in directional and worst scenarios. The directional scenario accounts for the distance and orientation of residential structures relative to a hypothetical turbine location, utilizing the turbine's sound emissions in that specific direction. In contrast, the worst scenario takes loudest sound level at each distance step from the turbine, irrespective of directional considerations, which aligns with current industry practice. 3. Supply curves for Open and Reference Access scenarios. This dataset includes supply curves generated by the reV model, which integrates each of the above sound setbacks into both Open and Reference siting scenarios. In addition, two Open and Reference baselines scenarios were included which do not consider sound setbacks for comparative analysis. All sound setback data are stored in TIF files, with partial maps of the data provided in PNG format. The values in the sound setback raster range from 0 to 1, representing the fraction of developable land within a 90 meter by 90 meter pixel due to sound ordinances. A value of 0 indicates areas where wind energy development is prohibited, while a value of 1 signifies areas fully permissible. The wind turbine parameters used in the sound modeling are based on the land-based turbine from International Energy Agency (IEA), featuring a rated electrical power of 3.4 MW, a rotor diameter of 130 meters, and a hub height of 110 meters. The atmospheric conditions, including wind speed/direction, turbulence, air temperature, relative humidity, and air pressure, that drive the sound generation are obtained from the WIND Toolkit dataset.

Array↗
NASA NTRS1992

Science Goals and Mission Objectives of Nasa's Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder Program

Knowledge of the global wind field is widely recognized as fundamental to advancing our understanding and prediction of the total Earth system. Yet, because wind profiles are primarily measured by land-based rawinsondes, the oceanic areas (covering three quarters of the Earth's surface) and many regions of the less developed southern hemisphere land areas are poorly observed. The gap between our requirements for wind data and their availability continues to widen. For example, as faster computers become available to model the atmosphere with ever increasing resolution and sophistication, our ability to model the atmosphere will be hampered by a lack of data, particularly wind profiles. In order to address this important deficiency in wind observations, NASA plans to construct the Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder (LAWS) instrument, with deployment tentatively scheduled between 2002 and 2005 as part of NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) mission. Addressed here is the importance of wind measurements for advancing our understanding and prediction of the total Earth System. The current characteristics of the LAWS instrument under study are also summarized.

Baker, Wayman E.↗
DOE OSTI2024

WIND Toolkit Long-Term Ensemble Dataset

WIND Toolkit Long-term Ensemble Dataset (WTK-LED), an updated version of the meteorological WIND Toolkit, is a meteorological dataset providing high-resolution time series, including interannual variability and model uncertainty of wind speed at every modeling grid point to indicate ranges of possible wind speeds. The data were produced using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). The vertical grid used in WTK-LED includes many vertical layers in the atmospheric boundary layer to provide information of atmospheric quantities across the rotor layer of utility scale and distributed wind turbines. The WTK-LED includes: (1) Numerical simulations of wind speed and other meteorological variables covering the contiguous United States (CONUS) and Alaska, with high-resolution (5-minute [min], 2-kilometer [km]) data for 3 years (2018-2020): WTK-LED CONUS, WTK-LED Alaska. (2) Climate simulations from Argonne National Laboratory covering North America, including Alaska, Canada, and most of Mexico and the Caribbean islands. These simulations complement the new WTK-LED to offer a 4-km, hourly dataset covering 20 years (2001-2020): WTK-LED Climate. (3) Specific long-term, high-resolution offshore simulations have been conducted separately for the U.S. coasts, Hawaii, and the Great Lakes, leading to the 2023 National Offshore Wind dataset: NOW-23. The data for Hawaii include land-based data and are part of WTK-LED Hawaii. Because the accuracy of simulations from a mesoscale model, such as WRF, varies depending on the location and weather situation, and can reach up to several m/s for wind speed, we provide simulated wind speed uncertainty estimates to the community to be used in conjunction with the deterministic model simulations. This dataset was developed to satisfy a wide group of stakeholders across various wind energy disciplines, including but not limited to stakeholders in the distributed and utility scale wind industry, the new emerging airborne wind energy field, grid integration, power systems modeling, environmental modeling, and researchers in academia, and to close some of the gaps that current public datasets have. Based on our validation results to date, we suggest use cases and applications for each dataset of the WTK-LED as shown in "WTK-LED Use Cases" resource below.

Array↗
DOE OSTI2023

The Wind Data Hub, also known as The Data Archive and Portal.

The Wind Data Hub, or WDH (formerly known as the Data Archive and Portal), is established by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO). The WDH provides secure, timely, easy, and open access to all laboratory, field, and benchmark model data produced by land-based and offshore projects funded by WETO.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

WTK-LED: The WIND Toolkit Long-Term Ensemble Dataset

To satisfy a wide group of stakeholders across various wind energy disciplines, including but not limited to stakeholders in the distributed and utility scale wind industry, the new emerging airborne wind energy field, grid integration, power systems modeling, environmental modeling, and researchers in academia, and to close some of the gaps that current public datasets have, we aimed at developing an updated version of the meteorological WIND Toolkit, named WIND Toolkit Long-term Ensemble Dataset (WTK-LED), which is a meteorological dataset providing time series every 5 min and 2 km, including model uncertainty of wind speed at every modeling grid point so that users are provided with a range of possible wind speeds every 2 km. The data were produced using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). The vertical grid used in WTK-LED includes many vertical layers in the atmospheric boundary layer to provide information of atmospheric quantities across the rotor layer of utility scale and distributed wind turbines. The WTK-LED includes: 1) Numerical simulations covering the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii, with high-resolution data being available for 3 years (2018-2020). 2) Climate simulations from Argonne National Laboratories covering the North American continent, including Alaska, Canada, and most of Mexico and the Caribbean Islands. These simulations complement the new WTK-LED to offer a 4-km dataset covering 20 years, from 2001-2020. 3) Specific long-term,high-resolution offshore simulations have been conducted separately for the US coasts, Hawaii, and the Great Lakes, leading to the 2023 National Offshore Wind data set. This report focuses on a description of the land-based WTK-LED for CONUS, Hawaii, and Alaska, for the 3-year 2-km/5-min dataset and the 20-year 4-km/hourly dataset, as well as the uncertainty quantification method. We also provide limited validation results. Based on our results to date, we suggest use cases and applications for each dataset of the WTK-LED.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

The Wind Turbine Rotors of the Future: A Research Agenda from the Big Adaptive Rotor Project

This white paper outlines a roadmap to inform future research efforts around the wind turbine rotors of the future. The document is authored by researchers that have been working on the Big Adaptive Rotor (BAR) and related initiatives at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. The Wind Energy Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy has been funding BAR since 2018. The learnings from BAR have been documented in dozens of publications. This new paper identifies unresolved critical challenges in wind turbine rotor technology and structures them in four large topic areas: 1. Predictive and validated numerical tools. 2. Design methods and standards. 3. Improvements in manufacturing. 4. Technological innovations. Although wind turbines have not changed in their core architecture, with the market almost entirely dominated by three-bladed upwind rotors, a vast amount of research has allowed to introduce technological innovations resulting in a reduction in levelized cost of energy that made wind competitive with all traditional sources of electricity. Focusing on the rotor, blades will keep following the trend of mass and stiffness reduction, will adopt segmentation, and will keep growing in length, both land-based and offshore. To support this continuous innovation, this white paper argues that research efforts in rotor technology at the national labs are best directed to the first three topic areas and to low technology-readiness-levels (1-3) innovations, leaving the task of implementing higher-TRL (4-9) technological innovations to industry stakeholders. This research roadmap is also well aligned with the upcoming roadmap defined during the International Energy Agency 109th Topical Expert Meeting on the Grand Challenges of Wind Energy.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Development of an open-source segmented blade design tool

As wind turbines continue to grow ever larger to reduce the cost of energy, their blades follow suit, with the largest commercial offshore blades extending past 100 m. Massive blades such as these raise key transportation and manufacturing challenges, especially for land-based turbines. Segmented blades are one solution and are garnering increased industry and research interest. In this work, a detailed mechanical joint model is integrated into the Wind-Plant Integrated System Design and Engineering Model (WISDEM ® ), which will facilitate future segmented blade research and optimization. WISDEM is used to design a wind turbine with 100-m segmented blades. This wind turbine design is compared to other machines with 100-m monolithic blades designed for rail-transportability. The designs are compared in terms of blade mass and cost, turbine capital cost, annual energy production, and levelized cost of energy, with monolithic designs being the lightest and most economical. However, this result may vary by wind plant location. A variety of segmentation joint types exist, and they will inevitably vary in parameters such as cost, spanwise location, and physical characteristics. This work examines the sensitivity of wind turbine design drivers and annual energy production to a variety of the aforementioned parameters, using the open-source wind turbine design codes OpenFAST and WISDEM, finding that joint mass, stiffness, and location can have significant effects on design drivers.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Large Castings for Wind Turbines

This analysis uses the Renewable Energy Materials Properties Database to examine supply considerations for two parts of a wind turbine, the hub and bedplate. Each of these cast iron components is cast as a single large piece up to 4 m across (for land-based turbines) or 8 m (offshore). Close to 5,000 hubs and bedplates have been installed per year in the United States and meeting the nation's clean energy goals could increase that number to 12,000-20,000 per year in the next decade. These parts are currently imported, but growing demand for wind turbine components may provide opportunities for domestic manufacturers.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Main Bearing Replacement and Damage - A Field Data Study on 15 Gigawatts of Wind Energy Capacity

This study seeks to establish a comprehensive baseline of knowledge for the replacement and damage of main bearings in wind turbines. The purpose of this report is to provide a high-level summary of the data set, methodology, and results of this work. Full technical details and an extended analysis will be made available in a future publication. We collected data on main bearing replacements and reported damage from industrial partners based in Europe and the United States. In total, we obtained data for 167 wind power plants, with a combined capacity of 15.3 gigawatts (GW). Most of the data set was comprised of land-based, three-point mount, spherical roller bearings. Within this data set were 689 instances of main bearing replacement. Analysis was undertaken in two parts: first, a statistical analysis of the main bearing time-to-replacement data using survival analysis techniques; second, quantitative and qualitative analyses of the obtained damage information. Our results showed that 10% of a fixed main bearing population would be expected to have been replaced by 10.5 years. This is close to half of the 20-year design value. Fitted parametric distributions then indicated that by year 20, between 22% and 25% of main bearings are expected to have been replaced. Analysis of the damage reports revealed spalling to be the main type of damage listed. The additional presence of surface damage in the collected data indicates that at least part of the spalling cases are likely due to surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue. At this stage is not clear what proportion of spalling cases result from "wear induced", surface-initiated and subsurface-initiated rolling contact fatigue. While this work provides important insights into the current state of main bearing replacements and damage, many questions remain. An ongoing and expanding data collection and analysis effort focused on wind turbine main bearings is therefore recommended.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1997

Moving-Base Simulation Evaluation of Control/Display Integration Issues for ASTOVL Aircraft

A moving-base simulation has been conducted on the Vertical Motion Simulator at Ames Research Center using a model of an advanced, short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) lift fan fighter aircraft. This experiment expanded on investigations during previous simulations with this STOVL configuration with the objective of evaluating (1) control law modifications over the low speed flight envelope, (2) integration of the throttle inceptor with flight control laws that provide direct thrust command for conventional flight, vertical and short takeoff, and flightpath or vertical velocity command for transition, hover, and vertical landing, (3) control mode blending for pitch, roll, yaw, and flightpath control during transition from wing-borne to jet-borne flight, and (4) effects of conformal versus nonconformal presentation of flightpath and pursuit guidance symbology on the out-the-window display for low speed STOVL operations. Assessments were made for takeoff, transition, hover, and landing, including precision hover and landing aboard an LPH-type amphibious assault ship in the presence of winds and rough seas. Results yielded Level 1 pilot ratings for the flightpath and vertical velocity command modes for a range of land-based and shipboard operation and were consistent with previous experience with earlier control laws and displays for this STOVL concept. Control mode blending was performed over speed ranges in accord with the pilot's tasks and with the change of the basic aircraft's characteristics between wing-borne and hover flight. Blending of yaw control from heading command in hover to sideslip command in wing-borne flight performed over a broad speed range helped reduce yaw transients during acceleration through the low speed regime. Although the pilots appreciated conformality of flightpath and guidance symbols with the external scene during the approach, increased sensitivity of the symbols for lateral path tracking elevated the pilots' control activity in the presence of turbulence. The pilots preferred the choice of scaling that was originally established during the display development and in-flight evaluations.

Franklin, James A.↗
NASA NTRS1994

The environmental influence on tropical cyclone precipitation

The intensity, spatial, and temporal changes in precipitation were examined in three North Atlantic hurricanes during 1989 (Dean, Gabrielle, and Hugo) using precipitation estimates made from Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) measurements. In addition, analyses from a barotropic hurricane forecast model and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast model were used to examine the relationship between the evolution of the precipitation in these tropical cyclones and external forcing. The external forcing parameters examined were (1) mean climatological sea surface temperatures, (2) vertical wind shear, (3) environmental tropospheric water vapor flux, and (4) upper-tropospheric eddy relative angular momentum flux convergence. The analyses revealed that (1) the SSM/I precipitation estimates were able to delineate and monitor convective ring cycles similar to those observed with land-based and aircraft radar and in situ measurements; (2) tropical cyclone intensification was observed to occur when these convective rings propagated into the inner core of these systems (within 111 km of the center) and when the precipitation rates increased; (3) tropical cyclone weakening was observed to occur when these inner-core convective rings dissipated; (4) the inward propagation of the outer convective rings coincided with the dissipation of the inner convective rings when they came within 55 km of each other; (5) in regions with the combined warm sea surface temperatures (above 26 C) and low vertical wind shear (less than 5 m/s), convective rings outside the region of strong lower-tropospheric inertial stability could be initiated by strong surges of tropospheric moisture, while convective rings inside the region of strong lower-tropospheric inertial stability could be enhanced by upper-tropospheric eddy relative angular momentum flux convergence.

Rodgers, Edward B.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Sea breezes and advective effects in southwest James Bay

Observations from a transect extending 100 km inland during the Northern Wetlands Study (NOWES) in 1990 show that the sea breeze develops on approximately 25% of days during summer and may penetrate up to 100 km inland on occasions. The sea breeze exhibits a marked diurnal clockwise rotation as a result of the Coriolis effect along the unobstructed coastline. The marine advective effect is shown to depend on gradient wind direction. With northwesterly upper level flow the sea breeze tends to be northeasterly in direction and is associated with decreased temperatures and vapor pressure deficits (VPD). With southwesterly upper level flow the sea breeze tends to have a southeasterly direction and less effect on temperatures and VPD. This is attributed to shorter residence times of air parcels over water. For two cases, Colorado State University mesoscale model simulations show good agreement with surface wind observations and suggest that under northwesterly gradient flow, Bowen ratios are increased in the onshore flow along western James Bay, while during southwesterly gradient flow these effects are negligible. These results have implications for the interpretation of local climate, ecology, and hydrology as well as land-based and airborne turbulent flux measurements made during NOWES.

Mckendry, Ian↗