Dynamic Wind Farm Flow Control at Torque

An excellent conference, with great scientific discussions and social events!

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Torque took place from May 28th until May 31st in Florence, Italy. At the Welcome Cocktail, we met many familiar faces, which was always a fun moment. It was hosted in the beautiful Garden of Villa Vittoria.

The Opening Session stunned everyone with its amazing location: Salone dei Cinquecento. Quoting our Italian colleagues, “That room is part of our history books in high school. Having the Opening session here is incredible!” Another noticeable element: if you were close enough, you could read on one of the paintings of the Salone the sentence “Chi cerca trova” (“Whoever seeks will find”)… inspiring for a community of researchers.

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At the conference, Emanuel Taschner gave a presentation on comparing the Helix and Wake steering. The study compares the two wake flow control strategies across a wide range of turbine spacings and wind directions. Emanuel showed that helix control is beneficial for full wake overlap, while wake steering is more relevant for partial wake overlap. Combining the two strategies, therefore, has potential for the design of a wind farm controller. This is good news, as both the helix control and wake steering are in the scope of the project.

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Many posters were also presented, including several from the team. Mees van Vondelen presented an experimental study of phase synchronization for a line of three turbines using Pulse control. Marion Coquelet used numerical simulations to highlight fundamental differences between two implementations of the Helix control (clockwise and counterclockwise). And Master’s students supervised by Jonas Gutknecht presented the porous disc that they have designed to mimick the Helix and that they have tested in the wind tunnel. There was also a poster, not from our group, that caught our attention: ‘Wear is not a threat to pitch bearings’. The Helix control relies on Individual Pitch Control and increases the pitch actuator's activity.

As “everyone” is there at Torque, it’s also a convenient moment to meet with our international collaborators, including our colleagues from Siemens Gamesa working on the Hollands Kust Noord project.

If you want to know more about our latest research, have a look at the Torque publications!