| Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005. |
Field study of ice accretion and its effects on the power production of utility-scale wind turbines
Author: | Technology
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Translate: FROM English | TO English
[abstract] A field study was conducted to examine ice accretion on 50-m-long turbine blades and icing-induced power production losses to multi-megawatt wind turbines. An unmanned-aerial-system equipped with a digital camera was deployed to take images of the ice structures on turbine blades after undergoing a 30-hour-long icing event to quantify the ice thickness accreted along blade leading edges. While ice accreted over entire blade spans, more ice was found to accrete on outboard blades with the ice thickness reaching up to 0.3 m near blade tips. Based on the icing similarity concept and blade element momentum theory, a theoretical analysis was performed to predict the ice thickness distributions on turbine blades. The theoretical predictions were found to agree with the field measurements well in general. Turbine operation status during the icing event was monitored by using turbine supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Despite the high wind, iced wind turbines were found to rotate much slower and even shut down frequently during the icing event, with the icing-induced power loss being up to 80%. The present study aims to fill in the knowledge gaps between the fundamental icing physics studies conducted under idealized lab conditions and complex wind turbine icing phenomena under realistic, natural icing conditions.
Linyue Gao, Hui Hu, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames
Tao Tao, Yongqian Liu, School of Renewable Energy, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China
Renewable Energy Volume 167, April 2021, Pages 917-928
doi: 10.1016/j.renene.2020.12.014
Download original document: “A field study of ice accretion and its effects on the power production of utility-scale wind turbines”
This material is the work of the author(s) indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.
The copyright of this material resides with the author(s). As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Queries e-mail.
| Wind Watch relies entirely on User Funding |
 (via Stripe) |
 (via Paypal) |
Share:
[ Short URLs: https://wind-watch.org/doc/?p=5562 | http://wndfo.net/D5562 ]
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
