Wind turbine icing characteristics and icing-induced power losses to utility-scale wind turbines

Abstract

A field campaign was carried out to investigate ice accretion features on large turbine blades (50 m in length) and to assess power output losses of utility-scale wind turbines induced by ice accretion. After a 30-h icing incident, a high-resolution digital camera carried by an unmanned aircraft system was used to capture photographs of iced turbine blades. Based on the obtained pictures of the frozen blades, the ice layer thickness accreted along the blades’ leading edges was determined quantitatively. While ice was found to accumulate over whole blade spans, outboard blades had more ice structures, with ice layers reaching up to 0.3 m thick toward the blade tips. With the turbine operating data provided by the turbines’ supervisory control and data acquisition systems, icing-induced power output losses were investigated systematically. Despite the high wind, frozen turbines were discovered to rotate substantially slower and even shut down from time to time, resulting in up to 80% of icing-induced turbine power losses during the icing event. The research presented here is a comprehensive field campaign to characterize ice accretion features on full-scaled turbine blades and systematically analyze detrimental impacts of ice accumulation on the power generation of utility-scale wind turbines. The research findings are very useful in bridging the gaps between fundamental icing physics research carried out in highly idealized laboratory settings and the realistic icing phenomena observed on utility-scale wind turbines operating in harsh natural icing conditions.

A collection and categorization of open‐source wind and wind power datasets

“…Countries where at least one dataset of aggregated and turbinelevel data are accessible are colored in stripes turbines, which was found to induce turbine power losses of up to 80%. 24 About 94% of turbines in Europe were found to be affected by icing. 25 Therefore, icing and its related weather variables such as precipitation and humidity can play a major role in the wind power forecast.…”

“…Bilal et al 23 show that including this additional weather information can increase the accuracy of the models. One reason behind this is icing of the turbines, which was found to induce turbine power losses of up to 80% 24 . About 94% of turbines in Europe were found to be affected by icing 25 .…”

Domain-invariant icing detection on wind turbine rotor blades with generative artificial intelligence for deep transfer learning

“…This fact shows that the energy transition is possible and wind energy contributes to around one-fifth of the electricity generated by renewable sources (Global Wind Energy Council, 2022). Winters are generally considered to be highly promising for wind power generation, owing to higher wind speeds and increased air density accompanied with low prevailing temperatures (Gao and Hu, 2021). In particular, cold regions are usually sparsely populated, have a good wind availability and are suitable for deployment of wind parks (Clifton et al, 2022).…”

Numerical simulation of the performance of an asymmetrical airfoil under extreme weather conditions

“…Power loss is affected by the accretion's intensity, frequency and duration of icing events [8] estimated that 20% of power losses occurs annually due to icing [9]. Gao & Hu [10] studied the effect of icing on a utility-scale turbine for a period of 51 hrs yielding 25 MW power loss. Homola et al…”

“…Simulation of icing helps improve safety and maintenance, reduce power losses, and decrease the load on the blade, which can cause the delamination and fracturing of the blade and thus reducing the lifespan. Ice accretion on the blade over an extended period increases the airfoil's mass, and can cause power reduction of up to 80% [10]. The reduction in power production also depends on the frequency of icing events in the region [16].…”