Specialized wind energy software applications aid in the development and operation of
wind farms
Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...
.
Pre-feasibility and feasibility analysis
The
RETScreen
The RETScreen Clean Energy Management Software (usually shortened to RETScreen Expert) is a software package developed by the Government of Canada. RETScreen Expert was highlighted at the 2016 Clean Energy Ministerial held in San Francisco. The G ...
software wind power model is designed to evaluate energy production and savings, costs, emission reductions, financial viability and risk for central-grid, isolated-grid and off-grid wind energy projects, for multi-turbine and single-turbine hybrid systems. Developed by the
Government of Canada
The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown ...
, the software is free, multilingual, and includes links to wind energy resource maps.
The
Wind Data Generator (WDG) is a Wind Energy Software tool capable of running WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model to create a
wind atlas
A wind atlas contains data on the wind speed and wind direction in a region. These data include maps, but also time series or frequency distributions. A climatological wind atlas covers hourly averages at a standard height (10 meters) over even l ...
and to generate wind data at resolutions of 3 km to 10 km.
Turbine design
Software helps design wind turbines. There are several aero-elastic packages that are used in this design process.
FOCUS6 aids in the design of wind turbines and turbine components such as rotor blades. It was developed by Knowledge Centre Wind turbine Materials and Constructions (WMC)
[Knowledge Centre Wind turbine Materials and Constructions (WMC) ](_blank)
/ref> and Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN).[Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands](_blank)
/ref>
The National Wind Technology Center (NWTC), a division of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US specializes in the research and development of renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy systems integration, and sustainable transportation. NREL is a federally funded research and d ...
(NREL), has developed many packages which are used by turbine manufacturers and researchers. NWTC has developed a suite of turbine design and performance prediction codes which rely on Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory. WT_Perf uses steady BEM theory to model turbine performance. FAST is a comprehensive aero-elastic simulator which uses unsteady BEM theory to model a turbine as a collection of rigid and flexible bodies in a spatiotemporal field of turbulent flow. Germanischer Lloyd found FAST suitable for "the calculation of onshore wind turbine loads for design and certification."[GL Wind Certificate No. ZZ 001A-2005](_blank)
/ref>[NWTC Design Codes](_blank)
/ref>
The open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
software QBlade
QBlade is a public source, cross-platform simulation software for wind turbine blade design and aerodynamic simulation.D. Marten,'' et al''., "QBlade: a modern tool for the aeroelastic simulation of wind turbines" PhD Thesis, TU Berlin, 2020. Ava ...
developed by the wind energy research group of Hermann Föttinger
Hermann Föttinger (9 February 1877 in Nuremberg – 28 April 1945 in Berlin) was a German engineer and inventor. In the course of his life he submitted over 100 patent applications, but he is most notable for inventing fluid coupling.
Career
...
Institute of TU Berlin
The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...
(Chair of Fluid Dynamics) is a BEM code coupled with the airfoil
An airfoil (American English) or aerofoil (British English) is the cross-sectional shape of an object whose motion through a gas is capable of generating significant lift, such as a wing, a sail, or the blades of propeller, rotor, or turbine.
...
simulation code XFOIL
XFOIL is an interactive program for the design and analysis of subsonic isolated airfoils. Given the coordinates specifying the shape of a 2D airfoil, Reynolds and Mach numbers, XFOIL can calculate the pressure distribution on the airfoil and he ...
. It allows the user to develop/import airfoil shapes, simulate them and use them for the design and simulation of wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each year. ...
blades/rotors with the use of steady state BEM theory. The software is built with the Qt framework
Qt (pronounced "cute") is cross-platform software for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems wit ...
thus it includes a graphical user interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
.
The open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
software Vortexje, developed by Baayen & Heinz GmbH in Berlin, is an unsteady 3D panel method implementation suitable for dynamic simulation of vertical and horizontal axis wind turbines. Easily coupled with other simulation environments such as Simulink
Simulink is a MATLAB-based graphical programming environment for modeling, simulating and analyzing multidomain dynamical systems. Its primary interface is a graphical block diagramming tool and a customizable set of block libraries. It offers t ...
and Dymola
Dymola is a commercial modeling and simulation environment based on the open Modelica modeling language.
Large and complex systems are composed of component models; mathematical equations describe the dynamic behavior of the system.
Developed by ...
, it is suitable for aerodynamic optimization, fluid-structure interaction problems, and unsteady control system simulation.
Ashes is a software package for analyzing aerodynamic and mechanical forces for onshore and offshore horizontal axis wind turbines. It is based on research done at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.
Flow modeling
Wind flow modeling software predicts important wind characteristics at locations where measurements are not available
Furow
is a software which offers a lineal flow model and a Computational fluid dynamic model in the same software. WAsP
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...
was created at Denmark's Risø National Laboratory. WAsP uses a ''potential flow'' model to predict how wind flows over terrain at a site. Meteodyn WT
Meteodyn WT, commonly known as Meteodyn is a wind energy software program that uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to conduct wind resource assessment. Developed and marketed by Meteodyn, Meteodyn WT was first released in September 2009. The s ...
, Windie, WindSim, WindStation
WindStation is a wind energy software which uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to conduct wind resource assessments in complex terrain. The physical background and its numerical implementation are described in. and the official manual of the ...
[Website of menzio GmbH and WindStation]
/ref> and the opensource
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
code ZephyTOOLS[RECHARGE NEWS "New software could make wind farm planning a breeze"]
use computational fluid dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate th ...
instead, which are potentially more accurate, but more computationally intensive.
Farm modeling
This software simulates wind farm behavior, most importantly to calculate its energy output. The user can usually input wind data, height and roughness contour lines (topography
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.
Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...
), turbine specifications, background maps, and define environmental restrictions. Processing this information produces the design of a wind farm that maximizes energy production while accounting for restrictions and construction issues. Packages includ
Furow
Meteodyn WT
Meteodyn WT, commonly known as Meteodyn is a wind energy software program that uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to conduct wind resource assessment. Developed and marketed by Meteodyn, Meteodyn WT was first released in September 2009. The s ...
, openWind, WindFarm
WindFarmer: Analyst
WindPRO
WindSim
and WindStation
WindStation is a wind energy software which uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to conduct wind resource assessments in complex terrain. The physical background and its numerical implementation are described in. and the official manual of the ...
.
WakeBlaster
is a specialised CFD service for modelling the wind farm wake losses.
Farm visualization
Wind farm visualization software graphically presents a proposed wind farm, most importantly for the purpose of obtaining building permits. The primary techniques include photomontages, zone-of-visual-impact maps and three-dimensional visualization (perspective views of the landscape often incorporating aerial photography
Aerial photography (or airborne imagery) is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other airborne platforms. When taking motion pictures, it is also known as aerial videography.
Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wing aircra ...
and including turbines and other objects).
Farm monitoring
Wind farm monitoring software is a software that allows people to see if the wind turbines are running well or are going to become broken. Other functions of monitoring software is reporting, analysis of measurement data (power curve) and tools for monitoring of environmental constraints (bat control, etc.).
Prediction software
For existing wind farms, several software systems exist which produce short and medium term forecasts for the generated power (single farms or complete forecast regions) using existing numerical weather prediction
Numerical weather prediction (NWP) uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of computer simulation in th ...
data (NWP) and live (SCADA
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) is a control system architecture comprising computers, networked data communications and graphical user interfaces for high-level supervision of machines and processes. It also covers sensors and ...
) farm data as input. Examples of numerical weather prediction
Numerical weather prediction (NWP) uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of computer simulation in th ...
models used for this purpose are the European HiRLAM HIRLAM, the High Resolution Limited Area Model, is a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) forecast system developed by the international HIRLAM programme.
Consortium
HIRLAM programme is a cooperation between following European meteorological institut ...
(High Resolution Limited Area Model) and the GFS (Global Forecast System) from NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
.
References
{{Wind power
Wind power
Computer-aided engineering software