Market Suitability and Performance Tradeoffs Offered by Commercial Wind Turbines across Differing Wind Regimes
The suitability of turbine configurations to different wind resources has been traditionally restricted to considering turbines operating as standalone entities. In this paper, a framework is thus developed to investigate turbine suitability in terms of the minimum cost of energy offered when operat...
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doaj-5c0c76c22ca24104a6e709de4535ec032020-11-24T23:06:47ZengMDPI AGEnergies1996-10732016-05-019535210.3390/en9050352en9050352Market Suitability and Performance Tradeoffs Offered by Commercial Wind Turbines across Differing Wind RegimesSouma Chowdhury0Ali Mehmani1Jie Zhang2Achille Messac3Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USALenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USADepartment of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USACollege of Engineering, Architecture and Computer Sciences, Howard University, Washington, DC 20059, USAThe suitability of turbine configurations to different wind resources has been traditionally restricted to considering turbines operating as standalone entities. In this paper, a framework is thus developed to investigate turbine suitability in terms of the minimum cost of energy offered when operating as a group of optimally-micro-sited turbines. The four major steps include: (i) characterizing the geographical variation of wind regimes in the onshore U.S. market; (ii) determining the best performing turbines for different wind regimes through wind farm layout optimization; (iii) developing a metric to quantify the expected market suitability of available turbine configurations; and (iv) exploring the best tradeoffs between the cost and capacity factor yielded by these turbines. One hundred thirty one types of commercial turbines offered by major global manufacturers in 2012 are considered for selection. It is found that, in general, higher rated power turbines with medium tower heights are the most favored. Interestingly, further analysis showed that “rotor diameter/hub height” ratios greater than 1.1 are the least attractive for any of the wind classes. It is also observed that although the “cost-capacity factor” tradeoff curve expectedly shifted towards higher capacity factors with increasing wind class, the trend of the tradeoff curve remained practically similar.http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/5/352capacity factorcost of energyturbine selectionwind farm layout optimizationwind map |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Souma Chowdhury Ali Mehmani Jie Zhang Achille Messac |
spellingShingle |
Souma Chowdhury Ali Mehmani Jie Zhang Achille Messac Market Suitability and Performance Tradeoffs Offered by Commercial Wind Turbines across Differing Wind Regimes Energies capacity factor cost of energy turbine selection wind farm layout optimization wind map |
author_facet |
Souma Chowdhury Ali Mehmani Jie Zhang Achille Messac |
author_sort |
Souma Chowdhury |
title |
Market Suitability and Performance Tradeoffs Offered by Commercial Wind Turbines across Differing Wind Regimes |
title_short |
Market Suitability and Performance Tradeoffs Offered by Commercial Wind Turbines across Differing Wind Regimes |
title_full |
Market Suitability and Performance Tradeoffs Offered by Commercial Wind Turbines across Differing Wind Regimes |
title_fullStr |
Market Suitability and Performance Tradeoffs Offered by Commercial Wind Turbines across Differing Wind Regimes |
title_full_unstemmed |
Market Suitability and Performance Tradeoffs Offered by Commercial Wind Turbines across Differing Wind Regimes |
title_sort |
market suitability and performance tradeoffs offered by commercial wind turbines across differing wind regimes |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
series |
Energies |
issn |
1996-1073 |
publishDate |
2016-05-01 |
description |
The suitability of turbine configurations to different wind resources has been traditionally restricted to considering turbines operating as standalone entities. In this paper, a framework is thus developed to investigate turbine suitability in terms of the minimum cost of energy offered when operating as a group of optimally-micro-sited turbines. The four major steps include: (i) characterizing the geographical variation of wind regimes in the onshore U.S. market; (ii) determining the best performing turbines for different wind regimes through wind farm layout optimization; (iii) developing a metric to quantify the expected market suitability of available turbine configurations; and (iv) exploring the best tradeoffs between the cost and capacity factor yielded by these turbines. One hundred thirty one types of commercial turbines offered by major global manufacturers in 2012 are considered for selection. It is found that, in general, higher rated power turbines with medium tower heights are the most favored. Interestingly, further analysis showed that “rotor diameter/hub height” ratios greater than 1.1 are the least attractive for any of the wind classes. It is also observed that although the “cost-capacity factor” tradeoff curve expectedly shifted towards higher capacity factors with increasing wind class, the trend of the tradeoff curve remained practically similar. |
topic |
capacity factor cost of energy turbine selection wind farm layout optimization wind map |
url |
http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/5/352 |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT soumachowdhury marketsuitabilityandperformancetradeoffsofferedbycommercialwindturbinesacrossdifferingwindregimes AT alimehmani marketsuitabilityandperformancetradeoffsofferedbycommercialwindturbinesacrossdifferingwindregimes AT jiezhang marketsuitabilityandperformancetradeoffsofferedbycommercialwindturbinesacrossdifferingwindregimes AT achillemessac marketsuitabilityandperformancetradeoffsofferedbycommercialwindturbinesacrossdifferingwindregimes |
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