Parallel Session III-B: Nuclear and Renewable Energy. Wind Farm Simulations Dennis Nagy and Mike Dombroski

Transcription

1 Parallel Session III-B: Nuclear and Renewable Energy Wind Farm Simulations Dennis Nagy and Mike Dombroski

2 Wind Energy Engineering: A Range of Important Roles for 3-D Simulation

3 Focus of this Presentation: Wind Energy Engineering Why? 1. Growing importance of wind energy in Texas/Houston 2. Vestas Case Study is an excellent example of customizable GUI and workflow integration strength of STAR-CCM+ If the simulations had been carried out before the prototype stage, millions of dollars could have been saved... Hans Grassmann - University of Udine

4 Texas: More than Just Oil & Gas April 30, 2009: Wind energy boom revives economy in oil state Texas Texas has historically been known as an oil rich state. Now it has become the leading center for the wind energy boom that has been sweeping the United States. By the end of last year over 7,100 MW of wind power capacity was operating in Texas, more than any other US state. The Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, spread across a vast area of West Texas, is the largest in the world. Through three stages of development it has reached a total installed capacity of 735 Megawatts (MW), with 421 individual wind turbines. On average, it can supply enough electricity for 180,000 Texan homes. 4

5 A Full Spectrum of Simulation Applications for Wind Energy Engineering Meso-scale weather/wind modeling (macro-weather data simulated/interpolated down to, at best, ~1 x 1 km. grid size via a form of quasi-2-d CFD) Wind farm simulation for Planning/turbine siting proposals. Initial broad use of 3-D CFD in practice does not (yet) add in any effects of the actual turbines/blades on the overall flow over the farm. Detailed planning/estimating of power yield from a proposed farm» here is where a major problem exists today: almost all built farms end up yielding at least 10% less power than predicted during the planning/financing stage Medium-term power output predictions (multiple days into the future) of existing wind farms Determining accurate loadings onto turbine blades (and thus part of the loadings on the shaft, turbine, and tower) Dynamic blade simulation for design of better blade shapes and durability (current life requirement is 20 years) with ever increasing blade lengths. Turbine design, including generator cooling (similar to underhood cooling in the automotive industry) Tower design, subject to dynamic loading from blade/turbine assembly plus wind loading directly on the tower plus wave (and current, if the towers are guyed to the ocean floor) loadings, for offshore wind farm towers Cooling of electronics in the generator and transmission systems (to the general electricity grid) Storage of surplus energy to match wind-variable supply to civilization-variable-demand (batteries, hydraulic storage,...) 5

6 The Significance of Houston for Wind Energy Texas and Houston have taken progressive steps to secure their positions as global hubs in an energy landscape that will increasingly rely on renewable sources of energy to supplement the use of fossil fuels. Today, Texas is the leading wind state in the USA, accounting for 26 per cent of the nation s total installed wind capacity or the equivalent of the electricity needed to power more than one million Texas homes. 6

7 The Vestas Case (Summary) Vestas is the world s largest wind turbine manufacturer: ~20% market share Over 35,500 turbines installed Full-service company Need for robust CFD simulation of proposed wind farms: For access by over 100 field sales/planning engineers with no CFD background Automated CFD, embedded into Vestas proprietary Site Check tool Rapid turnaround 7

8 Vestas Site Check Tool for Wind Farm Layout Design 8

9 In the Background, on the Vestas Central HPC Cluster in Denmark 9

10 And How Is It Done? Two Key Java Macros An excellent example of customizable STAR-CCM+ (for workflow in any industrial application 10

11 Scaling of STAR-CCM+ Application on Vestas Cluster 11

12 The Business Benefit to Vestas Previous procedure required field engineers to send a request and files to Vestas Headquarters CFD Group for processing: Average turnaround time to receive necessary 3-D CFD simulation results (data, plots) in standard Vestas report form: 3 weeks New, automated push-button procedure, embedded into Vestas Site Check: Now fully deployed (since April 2009) to over 100 Vestas engineers around the world Average turnaround time from pushing the button to receiving an with the needed reports: 2 hours 12

13 Future Developments 13

14 Further CD-adapco Activities EnviroWizzard: beta prototype of Java-based generic wizard (works within STAR-CCM+) to facilitate Wind park planning and power output estimations Contaminant tracking Emission propagation It is not a CD-adapco product, but an illustration of how to quickly develop a workflow-specific Java wizard in STAR-CCM+ Actuated disks: First level of approximately representing multiple turbines in a farm and their wake effects on down-wind turbines 14

15 Further CD-adapco Activities Detailed simulations of single turbine-blades-tower configurations For obtaining accurate dynamic blade loadings For calibrating/tuning actuated disk models (wake effects) For turbine cooling input 15

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17 Now over to Mike Dombroski for some demos 17