Offshore Wind Energy - part 1

The course gives an introduction to selected topics relevant for the utilization of offshore wind energy. The course gives the students basic insight about the wind over the ocean and how the wind energy can be extracted. Further, the challenges related to wind turbines in ocean waves are addressed. Key topics covered in this course are:

• History and future development of offshore wind energy.
• Wind energy meteorology for offshore wind
• Atmospheric measurement techniques and analysis of wind fields
• Aerodynamics of wind turbines. Momentum theory, airfoils
• Lifting line and lifting surface techniques
• Characteristics of wind turbines and wind farms.
• Modelling techniques for wind turbine and wind farm wakes

On completion of the course, the student should have the following learning outcomes defined in terms of knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

Students should be able to:

• Describe the characteristics of the marine atmospheric boundary layer
• Describe techniques for analysing wind fields.
• Sketch aerodynamic principles for extracting wind energy.
• Define the concept of wind turbine wakes and wind farm wakes.

Skills

Students should be able to:

• Estimate vertical wind profiles in the lower atmospheric boundary layer and perform statistical analysis of wind field data.
• Use basic momentum theory to estimate power from wind turbines.
• Use open-source wind farm simulation tools such as PyWake for simple wind resource assessment.
• Use AERODYN to study the aerodynamics of wind turbines.

General Competence

Students should be able to:

• Discuss mitigation strategies to reduce wind farm wakes.
• Propose methods to improve the power extraction from offshore wind turbines.
• Discuss the limits of wind farm simulation tools.