About the Extension of Wind Turbine Power Curve in the High Wind Region

Abstract

The financial sustainability and the profitability of wind farms strongly depend on the efficiency of the conversion of wind kinetic energy. This motivates further research about the improvement of wind turbine power curve. If the site is characterized by a considerable occurrence of very high wind speeds, it can become particularly profitable to update the power curve management. This is commonly done by raising the cut-out velocity and the high wind speed cut-in regulating the hysteresis logic. Doing this, on one side, the wind turbine possibly undergoes strong vibration and loads. On the other side, the energy improvement is almost certain and the point is quantifying precisely its magnitude. In this work, the test case of an onshore wind farm in Italy is studied, featuring 17 2.3 MW wind turbines. Through the analysis of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) data, the energy improvement from the extension of the power curve in the high wind speed region is simulated and measured. This could be useful for wind farm owners evaluating the realistic profitability of the installation of the power curve upgrade on their wind turbines. Furthermore, the present work is useful for the analysis of wind turbine behavior under extremely stressing load conditions.