Denmark: GL Garrad Hassan at EWEA 2012

The constant drive to innovate has taken the wind industry from its humble beginnings to its current prominence as the state of the art in energy generation.

For the industry to continue to develop and lead the globe to a new era of sustainable energy, innovation must be ongoing, global, and part of every facet of the process from development to delivery. EWEA 2012 will mark the Association’s thirtieth year and GL Garrad Hassan will be at the conference, with experts giving presentations, chairing sessions and there to meet attendees at an exhibition stand.

 GL Garrad Hassan Presentations at EWEA 2012:

 David Williams, Senior Strategy & Policy Consultant

‘Love Thy Neighbour: Sharing the 2020 targets’ (Theme: Policies, markets & programmes) Monday, 16 April 2012, 16:00 – 17:30

From being abstract figures negotiated by bureaucrats, the EU 2020 renewable energy targets and individual nation’s capabilities for meeting them are fast becoming not just tangible problems but an issue of urgent concern. Failing to meet targets for some nations is beginning to look likely while others remain set to sail through with capacity to spare. This is where so called “cooperation mechanisms” may come into play, even if they are currently somewhat hazily defined. David Williams’ paper investigates what these mechanisms mean for the wind industry.

 John King – Loads Analysis Engineer

‘Improving wind farm output predictability by means of a soft cut-out strategy’ (Theme: Hardware technology) Tuesday, 17 April 2012, 09:00 – 10:30

Wind turbines are usually designed to shut down in wind speeds above the 25 m/s cut-out wind speed. The passage of a storm front through an area with high wind energy penetration can cause large numbers of turbines to shut down suddenly with little warning. This unpredictability leads to high backup costs and a low value for the generated energy. The problem can be solved with a smooth ramped cut-out strategy, but this would usually cause excessive structural loading. John King’s paper shows that with careful attention to the controller design, the increased loading can be avoided.

 Lars Landberg, Vice President – Head of R&D, Business Stream Leader Forecasting and Training

‘Taking the guesswork out of wind power forecasting’, Tuesday, 17 April 2012, 11:00 – 12:30

Lars Landberg’s presentation looks at the possible ways of predicting the power output of a wind farm or groups of wind farms. It investigates the performance of some very simple models, very close to guessing, progressing through various levels of sophistication to the current state of the art. He also discusses the potential economic benefits to owners, operators, utilities and society at large. Finally, the presentation examines what might be next for wind power forecasting.

 Paul Gardner, Senior Principal Engineer

‘The limiting factors for wind integration’ (Theme: Policies, markets & programmes) Tuesday, 17 April 2012, 11:00 – 12:30

Traditionally, wind penetration on electricity networks has been assumed to be limited by technical factors. Mr Gardener’s paper investigates this assumption and demonstrates that the fundamental limits are economic.

 Ervin Bossanyi, Senior Principal Engineer

‘Un-freezing the turbulence: improved wind field modelling for investigating Lidar-assisted wind turbine control’ (Theme: Science & research) Wednesday, 18 April 2012, 14:00 – 15:30

In recent years, the development of LIDAR technology has led to a great deal of interest in the possibility of improving turbine control by making use of a turbine-mounted Lidar system to sense the approaching wind field before it reaches the turbine, providing preview information which might assist the controller to improve turbine performance. Ervin Bossanyi’s paper examines how to model the evolution of turbulence between the point where a Lidar beam measures it, and the time it hits the turbine.

 Michael Wilkinson, Engineer

‘The reliable wind turbine: What can intelligent health monitoring achieve?’ (Theme: Science & research) Wednesday, 18 April 2012, 16:00 – 17:30

A common question when considering wind turbine reliability is: how is failure rate and downtime affected by the environment in which the turbine is operating? Michael Wilkinson’s paper addresses this question by drawing on data gathered in assessments of over 20GW of operating wind energy plant across the world.

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Offshore WIND staff, April 17, 2012; Image: gl