| dc.description.abstract | A transition towards renewable energy sources is a pressing concern for society and government
officials, and the offshore wind industry is more relevant than ever. The industry has the
potential to meet Europe’s energy demand by seven times, if fully realized. Reliable wind
resource assessments and energy production methods are vital in order to determine the
feasibility of new offshore wind farms and for technology to evolve. According to the IEC
61400-12-1 standard procedure for power curve validation of wind turbines, measurements of
the wind speed is taken at hub height. The standard procedure assumes that the hub height wind
speed makes a sufficient representation of the wind speed experienced across the entire rotor
swept area. As the wind industry is moving offshore and the turbine rotor gets bigger, the IEC
61400-12-1 assumption becomes questionable.
This thesis examines the theoretical energy output of a reference wind turbine through hub
height wind speed (HHWS) and rotor equivalent wind speed (REWS) and compare it to the
actual power output retrieved from SCADA. A new method for calculating the real power curve
through SCADA data has also been applied and deals with the velocity deficit caused by rotor
distortion. The thesis further examines the validity of complementing reanalysis data with local
measurements through scaling, using WindPRO and WAsP. This method could be strongly
beneficial when the data quality in the local measurements is low. | |
