Wind turbine design software
#Wind turbine design software software#
Here are a few other examples of how focused engineering software is pushing the wind industry forward.Īs the primary simulation tool in the design of about half of the utility-scale wind turbines manufactured worldwide, DNV GL’s Bladed wind-turbine modeling software has recently undergone a transformation to improve its outputs and user experience.Īnalysis tools, such as those offered in DNV GL’s Bladed wind-turbine modeling software, can assist engineers in the design of more reliable turbines, with lower modeling costs and in shorter periods. In addition to improvements in manufacturing and O&M, it seems that advances in software are paving the way to further industry growth. The DOE’s wind site contends that: “To ensure future industry growth, the technology must continue to evolve, building on earlier successes to further improve reliability, increase capacity factors, and reduce costs.” The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Wind Energies Technologies Office has stated that generation costs by wind power have dropped considerably from over 55 cents (current dollars) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) back in the 80s to an average of 2.35 cents in the U.S. Additionally, SOWFA lets turbine manufacturers study designs before they are manufactured and lets developers assess the performance of turbines on a proposed site before construction, reducing the risks of development. SOWFA let users investigate the effects of weather patterns, turbulence, and complex terrain on the performance of turbines and wind farms.Īccording to NREL, such software also lets engineers and scientists understand the causes of wind-farm underperformance, increase a farm’s power output, and decrease the effects of structural loads to minimize wear on turbine components.
The researchers were able to make this conclusion, thanks to the design and development of “Simulator fOr Wind Farm Applications” (or SOWFA), a coupled open-source software platform and framework. This is important insight for developers who are deciding on the optimal placement of turbines in a farm. Upon accumulating and analyzing the data, the NREL team found that “optimizing yaw control and the relative positioning of individual turbines improved the power performance of downstream wind turbines by mitigating the interference that wind turbines in an array have on each other.” The research was referred to as “The butterfly effect at wind-farm scales,” which refers to the concept that small causes can have large effects or that small occurrences (say in one wind turbine) can impact a larger scale (for an entire wind farm). But researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) decided to look at the bigger picture and the performance of a wind farm as a whole.
#Wind turbine design software how to#
It connects field workers with experts for a shared experience to more rapidly diagnose, inspect, and resolve problems in low bandwidth and rugged environments.įor example, until recently much focus was on how to improve the performance of individual wind turbines through comparative analytics, and programs that assessed turbines under different loading and weather conditions. Onsight Connect video collaboration software runs on smartphones, tablets, desktops, and even smart glasses.