WESC 2025 in Nantes

The work couples wake steering optimization to passive relocating floating wind farm optimization. The work highlights the coupling between the effect of wake steering on the relocation of the FOWTs, which is governed by the mooring system design. The work shows that coupling wake steering to floating wind farm mooring design, drastically increase the efficiency of the wind farm.

Characterizing wind and turbulence in complex terrain is always a challenge. Here we use a variety of sensors, drones, lidars and metmast to understand the complex flow. We deployed a multi-sensor setup at the WINSENT site—a complex ridge location—to evaluate sensor performance, data consistency, and spatial variability. There are measurement discrepancies tied to terrain complexity and recommendations for best practices in sensor placement and data quality control to enhance site characterization for wind-energy projects have been made.

The challenge of accurately measuring wind speeds using lidar in complex terrain is not an easy task, as topography can create bias in the measurements. To understand the variability, a round-robin test comparing lidar measurements against reference anemometers across various sites has been conducted. The key takeaways are that terrain-induced biases are significant but quantifiable, and the round-robin data enabled the derivation of consensus correction factors. These corrections improve the reliability of lidar-based wind resource assessments.

Flexible operations is the key for future wind farms. Here we explore how wind turbines can be operated more flexibly by dynamically adjusting their control setpoints to maximize revenue while minimizing fatigue damage. We develop a heuristic optimization algorithm to efficiently solve it. The method is applied to the IEA 22 MW reference turbine, demonstrating that smart setpoint selection based on electricity prices and fatigue sensitivity can significantly enhance both economic and structural performance.