Reference turbines for scaling

Wind & Water
1

Hello,

Can anyone help me find if there is a repository for reference turbines when I want to scale from a specific MW rating to another. For example, from 1MW to 4 MW.
And how is the scaling usually done if I want to scale a 1MW turbine to a higher rating.
Best,
Karthik

2

Dear @Karthik.Prakash,

A similar question regarding scaling was discussed previously in this forum, e.g., here: 2.5 MW WT.

The OpenFAST r-test (GitHub - OpenFAST/r-test) provides several OpenFAST models of different sizes. The IEA Wind Task 37 repository contains a few other reference models: IEAWindTask37 · GitHub.

Best regards,

1 Like
3

Dear @Jason.Jonkman ,

My task at the moment is to build a 4MW onshore wind turbine from scratch and I don’t have any parameters from the OEM or the OEM data, all I have is the pad locations and some generic turbine parameters like power, rotor dia, masses of certain components etc. I was wondering, how I can build a OpenFast model from those information. Can I use WISEDEM for that or any other methods is available. The main aim is to build those models and run a site specific simulation for loads.

Regards,
Karthik

4

Hi Karthik,

This is a common activity for us. With WISDEM, we actually have an example prepped around rescaling a reference turbine to a new rating or dimension. The example rescales the 15-MW reference turbine to 20MW. For your problem at hand, I would suggest:

  1. Start with the IEA 3.4-MW reference turbine found here.
  2. Save a new geometry-yaml file at the new rating, rotor diameter, hub height, etc. that you know already
  3. Reoptimize the blade and tower. The 15-MW example does this all in one step, but you can do it in two steps (blade then tower) if you want to step gingerly.
  4. You can likely skip any re-optimization of the drivetrain as the 3.4-MW design is likely close enough to want to need
  5. Once you have the new geometry-yaml input file for your optimized 4-MW design, you can then use WEIS to generate OpenFAST input files and start your more detailed loads analysis. If you haven’t been exposed to WEIS before, it is an amalgamation of WISDEM and OpenFAST (and a handful of other NREL tools too).

Good luck!
Garrett

1 Like
5

@Garrett.Barter Thanks a lot for getting back Garret with the detailed explanation.

I have few queries in the below steps.

  1. For step2, I only have very few values when compared to the number of variables seen in the .yaml file. Can I just start with just those values I have and keep the remaining values as is in the .yaml file

  2. On step3, the optimization is done via a specific tool? Can you help me understand how the optimization should be done with basic parameters that I have.

Best regards,
Karthik

6

Hi Karthik,

Yes, you can keep all values the same except for the handful of key parameters that you want to change. That is the benefit of using a reference turbine that is adjacent to the turbine you want to model.

WISDEM is a design optimization tool and will run what you like depending on user inputs. If this is new territory for you, I would recommend taking a look at the WISDEM documentation and walking through examples two, three, and five.

If the scope of the effort seems to be running away from you, an alternative is to consider the 3.4-MW reference turbine as “close enough” and skip to step 5 where you use it with WEIS to run OpenFAST-level load studies.

Cheers,
Garrett

7

Hi Garrett,

Many Thanks for getting back. Probably a naive question.

In order to try out WEIS to run OpenFAST level load cases, can you point me to any link that shows me how to run WEIS for the same.

I tried the method mentioned WISDEM and it ran but I was not able to find where the Out put files were stored. I ran this example 05_IEA-3.4-130-RWT.

The output I got was as below. I see that all the *.yaml files got updated but no other files were created.

image
image790Ă—361 8.36 KB

Can you help me on where to find the out put for the above run and how I can run WEIS to for OpenFAST level load cases.

Best regards,
Karthik

8

Hi Karthik,

It looks like you launched the GUI from the root of the C-Drive. Look in there for an “outputs” folder.

Cheers,
Garrett

9

Hi Garrett,

Thanks a lot for the reply. Is there a webpage that can guide me on how to run WEIS so that the the OpenFast input files like .fst, .dat etc are created. I couldn’t locate the page.

I could only find WISDEM page to run and when I ran the same, I got the below outputs and not the OpenFast inputs.

image

Best regards,
Karthik

10

I believe this was answered by Dan Zalkind on a Github Issue you also filed?

11

Hi everyone,
I am interested in constructing the tower specifications for a 4.2 MW wind turbine, about which I have very little data available. I referred to the previous posts and used WISDEM to construct a turbine of my rating by editing the values of power, tower height, and rotor diameter in the nrel5mw.yaml file and got the output files. In the Excel file, refurb_output, I got the values of mass density, fore-aft stiffness, and outside diameter, same as the NREL 5mw turbine. This confuses me and I believe is not correct. Is there anything wrong with my procedure, or is the WISDEM output file not applicable for rescaling the tower? Finally, I am interested in using the values of Tower Height, and (Diameter, Mass density, and stiffness ) values of tower sections for constructing tower values in BLADED. Thanks in advance.
Thanks and Regards
Nitin