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Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines

A field campaign was carried out to investigate ice accretion features on large turbine blades (50 m in length) and to assess power output losses of utility-scale wind turbines induced by ice accretion. After a 30-h icing incident, a high-resolution digital camera carried by an unmanned aircraft sys...

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Autores principales: Gao, Linyue, Hu, Hui
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8545448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34635597
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111461118
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author Gao, Linyue
Hu, Hui
author_facet Gao, Linyue
Hu, Hui
author_sort Gao, Linyue
collection PubMed
description A field campaign was carried out to investigate ice accretion features on large turbine blades (50 m in length) and to assess power output losses of utility-scale wind turbines induced by ice accretion. After a 30-h icing incident, a high-resolution digital camera carried by an unmanned aircraft system was used to capture photographs of iced turbine blades. Based on the obtained pictures of the frozen blades, the ice layer thickness accreted along the blades’ leading edges was determined quantitatively. While ice was found to accumulate over whole blade spans, outboard blades had more ice structures, with ice layers reaching up to 0.3 m thick toward the blade tips. With the turbine operating data provided by the turbines’ supervisory control and data acquisition systems, icing-induced power output losses were investigated systematically. Despite the high wind, frozen turbines were discovered to rotate substantially slower and even shut down from time to time, resulting in up to 80% of icing-induced turbine power losses during the icing event. The research presented here is a comprehensive field campaign to characterize ice accretion features on full-scaled turbine blades and systematically analyze detrimental impacts of ice accumulation on the power generation of utility-scale wind turbines. The research findings are very useful in bridging the gaps between fundamental icing physics research carried out in highly idealized laboratory settings and the realistic icing phenomena observed on utility-scale wind turbines operating in harsh natural icing conditions.
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spelling pubmed-85454482021-10-27 Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines Gao, Linyue Hu, Hui Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Physical Sciences A field campaign was carried out to investigate ice accretion features on large turbine blades (50 m in length) and to assess power output losses of utility-scale wind turbines induced by ice accretion. After a 30-h icing incident, a high-resolution digital camera carried by an unmanned aircraft system was used to capture photographs of iced turbine blades. Based on the obtained pictures of the frozen blades, the ice layer thickness accreted along the blades’ leading edges was determined quantitatively. While ice was found to accumulate over whole blade spans, outboard blades had more ice structures, with ice layers reaching up to 0.3 m thick toward the blade tips. With the turbine operating data provided by the turbines’ supervisory control and data acquisition systems, icing-induced power output losses were investigated systematically. Despite the high wind, frozen turbines were discovered to rotate substantially slower and even shut down from time to time, resulting in up to 80% of icing-induced turbine power losses during the icing event. The research presented here is a comprehensive field campaign to characterize ice accretion features on full-scaled turbine blades and systematically analyze detrimental impacts of ice accumulation on the power generation of utility-scale wind turbines. The research findings are very useful in bridging the gaps between fundamental icing physics research carried out in highly idealized laboratory settings and the realistic icing phenomena observed on utility-scale wind turbines operating in harsh natural icing conditions. National Academy of Sciences 2021-10-11 2021-10-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8545448/ /pubmed/34635597 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111461118 Text en Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Physical Sciences
Gao, Linyue
Hu, Hui
Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines
title Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines
title_full Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines
title_fullStr Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines
title_full_unstemmed Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines
title_short Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines
title_sort wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines
topic Physical Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8545448/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34635597
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111461118
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