Parameterising the Impact of Roughness Evolution on Wind Turbine Performance

Abstract

This paper presents a study investigating the effects of surface roughness on airfoil performance and its consequences for wind turbine energy yield. This study examined 51 sets of experimental data across 16 airfoils to identify trends in roughened airfoil performance. The trends are used to formulate a novel ‘roughness evolution parameter’ that can be applied to airfoils with no roughened data available to predict the impact of roughness on performance. Blade element momentum theory is used to model the performance of the DTU 10 MW reference wind turbine, with uniformly roughened blades emulated using the roughness evolution parameter. An annual energy production loss between 0.6–9.6% is found for the DTU 10 MW turbine when considering a plausible range of values for the roughness evolution parameter derived from the experimental data. A framework has been developed to evaluate how the roughness evolution parameter changes over time, informed by observed changes in wind farm performance from previous studies.