To deliver the future needed renewable energy capacity, wind farm developers will have to use larger turbines, at higher altitudes, explore novel geographical regions and offshore sites.
Currently, wind turbines and wind farms are designed and operated with “only” wind conditions in mind. Consequently, models do not take into account the physics and aerodynamics of atmospheric wind flows at high altitude, nor how they are affected by location, the effect of precipitation and/or airborne dust. This reduces the expected efficiency of wind energy production and makes it difficult to estimate energy production, operating costs and blade and turbine lifetimes, which increases variability and risk for investors and project developers when designing wind farms, reducing the total potential investment. Unless new sites can be identified and optimally designed, LCOEs will start to increase as developers have to design wind farms that cannot be well predicted by conventional models.
The AIRE consortium anticipates that precipitation and other phenomena (clouds, sand, shear, inflow) brought into play by the wind will be the new key parameters for wind turbine siting, wind farm design, component design and planning of operation and maintenance strategies. AIRE will investigate the solution to assess the potential impact of REAL weather conditions in different terrains, and different altitudes both onshore and offshore, by collecting data from 4 experimental sites and 4 commercial wind farms. In particular, AIRE will bring together researchers, blade manufacturers and utilities to create an open access knowledge center of experimental data, develop new numerical models and build tools to design and control wind turbines and wind farms. The effectiveness of the tools and models developed will be validated with data from commercial wind farms.
