White Papers
Yaw Control Optimization
It is widely believed in the wind industry that improvements in yaw control can only produce a small improvement in output power. This belief simultaneously exists with an acknowledgement that attempting to measure wind characteristics in the turbulent post-rotor wind is problematic.
BlueScout has shown, on a variety of turbines, that power increases can be achieved when improved wind angle information is fed into the yaw control systems of turbines. However, this early work typically uses the legacy control strategy of the turbine. In truth, turbine manufacturers have invested considerable time and thought into developing yaw control strategies that compensate for the errors of the post-rotor measurement system. However, those strategies typically include long averaging times and allow considerable variance in yaw before correcting the yaw angle of the turbine.
Analysis of Traditional Yaw Measurement
In this paper, we look in greater detail at the yaw angle of the turbine relative to the wind.
Key question: Based upon data from the nacelle-mounted measurement system, what are the characteristics of the current yaw measurement system?
Key question: Does the rotating vortex post-rotor have an effect on measurement of yaw
angle?
Key question: Can rotor-induced errors in yaw measurements be corrected so that a good control system can be designed?
Wind Measurements and Power
The wind is a curious creature, blowing this way and that. Mathematicians would say that wind is a classic example of chaos. If asked about the wind, a surfer would simply shrug and say that waves are crazy, too. This powerful, but also quirky creature, the breeze that makes a child smile - this is what we must capture.
Our world needs us, the wind turbine industry, to produce power, cleanly, efficiently and at low cost. Here at BlueScout, our contribution to the wind industry is to use our understanding of optics to provide a fundamentally deeper understanding of the wind resource - to produce substantial, repeatable increases in the output power of wind
turbines.
Controller Description GE1.5 SLE
The BlueScout Optical Control System (OCS) is designed to improve turbine performance by enhancing alignment of the turbine with approaching wind while maintaining or enhancing the overall safety and reliability of the turbine. The OCS utilizes state of the art laser sensors to detect the approaching wind before it reaches the rotor, and commands yaw actuations of the nacelle in order to reduce yaw error. More timely and accurate alignment with the wind leads to improved power capture.
