Unit 2

Physics of Wind Power

History of wind power

People used wind energy to propel boats along the Nile River as early as 5,000 BC. By 200
BC, simple wind-powered water pumps were used in China, and windmills with woven-reed
blades were grinding grain in Persia and the Middle East. New ways to use wind
energy eventually spread around the world.

Mechanical power generation: The earliest windmills recorded were vertical axis mills. These
windmills can be described as simple drag devices. They have been used in the Afghan
highlands to grind grain since the seventh century BC.

In Europe, windmill performance was constantly improved between the twelfth and
nineteenth centuries. By the end of the nineteenth century, the typical European windmill
used a rotor of 25 meters in diameter, and the stocks reached up to 30 meters. Windmills
were used not only for grinding grain but also for pumping water to drain lakes and marshes.
By 1800 about 20 000 modern European windmills were in operation in France alone, and in
the Netherlands 90 % of the power used in the industry was based on wind energy.
Industrialisation then led to a gradual decline in windmills, but in 1904 wind energy still
provided 11 % of the Dutch industrial energy and Germany had more than 18 000 installed
units. When the European windmills slowly started to disappear, windmills were introduced
by settlers in North America. Small windmills for pumping water to livestock became very
popular. These windmills, also known as American Windmills, operated fully selfregulated,
which means they could be left unattended. The self-regulating mechanism pointed the rotor
windward during high-speed winds. The European style windmills usually had to be turned
out of the wind or the sailing blades had to be rolled up during extreme wind speeds, to avoid
damage to the windmill. The popularity of windmills in the USA reached its peak between
1920 and 1930, with about 600 000 units installed. Various types of American Windmills are
still used for agricultural purposes all over the world.

Electrical power generation: In 1891, the Dane Poul LaCour was the first to build a wind
turbine that generated electricity. Danish engineers improved the technology during World
Wars 1 and 2 and used the technology to overcome energy shortages. The wind turbines by
the Danish company F. L. Smidth built in 1941–42 can be considered forerunners of modern
wind turbine generators. The Smidth turbines were the first to use modern airfoils, based on
the advancing knowledge of aerodynamics at this time. At the same time, the American
Palmer Putnam built a giant wind turbine for the American company Morgan Smith Co., with
a diameter of 53 meters. Not only was the size of this machine significantly different but also
the design philosophy differed. The Danish philosophy was based on an upwind rotor with
stall regulation, operating at slow speed. Putnam’s design was based on a downwind rotor
with variable pitch regulation. Putnam’s turbine, however, was not very successful. It was
dismantled in 1945. See Table 2.2 for an overview of important historical wind turbines.
After World War 2, Johannes Juul in Denmark developed the Danish design philosophy
further. His turbine, installed in Gedser, Denmark, generated about 2.2 million kWh between
1956 and 1967. At the same time, the German Hu¨tter developed a new approach. His wind
turbine comprised two slender fibreglass blades mounted downwind of the tower on a
teetering hub. Hu¨tter’s turbine became known for its high efficiency

Indian and Global statistics

Global

Overview of grid-connected wind power generation

Wind energy was the fastest growing energy technology in the 1990s, in terms of percentage
of yearly growth of installed capacity per technology source. The growth of wind energy,
however, has not been evenly distributed around the world. By the end of 2003, around 74%
of the worldwide wind energy capacity was installed in Europe, a further 18% in North
America and 8% in Asia and the Pacific.

Europe

Between the end of 1995 and the end of 2003, around 76 % of all new grid-connected wind
turbines worldwide were installed in Europe (see Tables 2.4 and 2.5). The countries with the
largest installed wind power capacity in Europe are Germany, Denmark and Spain.

North America

After the wind power boom in California during the mid-1980s, development slowed down
significantly in North America. In the middle of the 1990s the dismantling of old wind farms
sometimes exceeded the installations of new wind turbines, which led to a reduction in
installed capacity.

The overall capacity of all wind turbines installed worldwide by the end of 2018 reached 597
Gigawatt, according to preliminary statistics published by WWEA today. 50’100 Megawatt
were added in the year 2018, slightly less than in 2017 when 52’552 Megawatt were
installed. 2018 was the second year in a row with growing number of new installations but at
a lower rate of 9,1%, after 10,8% growth in 2017. All wind turbines installed by end of 2018
can cover close to 6% of the global electricity demand.

The by far largest wind power market, China, installed an additional capacity of 21 Gigawatt
and has become the first country with an installed wind power capacity of more than 200
Gigawatt. It has re-taken the growth path after a no-so-strong year in 2017 when a
comparatively modest 19 Gigawatt were installed. China continues its undisputed position as
the world’s wind power leader, with an accumulated wind capacity of 217Gigawatt.

The second largest market, the USA, saw an increase in new capacity from 6,7 Gigawatt in
2017 to 7,6 Gigawatt in 2018, in spite of less ambitious national climate and energy targets.
This positive development is certainly not only a result of the economics of wind power, but
also of strong and comprehensive support on the state and municipal level. Soon, the US will
be the second country after China reaching an installed capacity of more than 100 Gigawatt.

Indian

India had a record year and was the fourth largest market globally both in terms of
cumulative capacity and annual additions last year. 3,612 MW of new wind power was added
to reach a total of 28,700 MW at the end of December 2016. This total has risen to 31,177
MW at the end of March 2017.

The total renewable energy capacity installed in the country crossed the 50 GW mark at the
end of 2016. Among renewables, wind power accounted for over 57 percent of the installed
capacity.

India’s wind power installations accounted for a 6.6 percent share of the global market in
2016. Wind power capacity accounted for over 9.1 percent of total domestic installed
capacity.
In February 2015, India committed to installing 60 GW of wind and 100 GW of solar by
2022. Further, India made a commitment at COP21 to raise the share of non-fossil-fuel power
capacity in the country’s power mix to 40% by 2030.

Wind physics

Air has mass. Moving air has both mass and velocity. Wind is moving air and therefore wind
contains kinetic energy. The higher the velocity of the wind the greater the kinetic energy it
contains.

Consider an Eclectic D400 wind turbine. It has air blades with a diameter of 1.1 metres which
sweep out an area of about 1 square metre. Assume the wind is blowing at a velocity of 5 m/s
(10knots) and then visualise this as a cylinder of air 1.1 metre diameter and 5 metre long in
front of the air rotor. Air weighs about 1.2 kg per cubic metre at sea level, so our ‘cylinder’ of
air weighs 6kg. This ‘weight’ of air passes through the air rotor each second, and as it does
so, a proportion of the kinetic energy it contains is extracted by the D400’s air rotor. The
velocity of the wind is the critical element in this process because higher winds pass a greater
mass of air through the air rotor each second (imagine an ever longer cylinder of air!).
Because the amount of kinetic energy varies as the square of its speed, this results in a cubic
relationship between wind speed and available energy. The effects of this are dramatic. For
example, there is almost 75% more energy available in a 12-mph wind than at 10mph. Just as
available energy rises quickly with increasing velocity, so it diminishes rapidly at low wind
speeds.

There is very little useful energy in wind speeds below 6mph (3m/s).

Betz limit
The Betz limit is the theoretical maximum efficiency for a wind turbine, conjectured by
German physicist Albert Betz in 1919.Betz concluded that this value is 59.3%, meaning that
at most only 59.3% of the kinetic energy from wind can be used to spin the turbine and
generate electricity. In reality, turbines cannot reach the Betz limit, and common efficiencies
are in the 35-45% range.

Tip speed ratio

The tip-speed ratio, λ, or TSR for wind turbines is the ratio between the tangential speed of
the tip of a blade and the actual speed of the wind.

The tip speed of the blade can be calculated as times R, where is the rotational speed of the
rotor in radians/second, and R is the rotor radius in metres. Therefore, we can also write:

Stall and Pitch Control

Stall Control

Passive stall-controlled wind turbines have the rotor blades bolted onto the hub at a fixed
angle.
Active stall control means that the turbine will actively change the shape of the blade to
begin slowing the rotor when wind speeds reach a certain level. Tip brakes, or speed brakes
can deploy mechanically on the blades when the turbine reaches a certain speed.

One of the advantages of active stall is that one can control the power output more accurately
than with passive stall, so as to avoid overshooting the rated power of the machine at the
beginning of a gust of wind.

Another advantage is that the machine can be run almost exactly at rated power at all high
wind speeds. A normal passive stall-controlled wind turbine will usually have a drop in the
electrical power output for higher wind speeds, as the rotor blades go into deeper stall.

Pitch Control

On a pitch-controlled wind turbine the turbine's electronic controller checks the power output
of the turbine several times per second. When the power output becomes too high, it sends an
order to the blade pitch mechanism which immediately pitches (turns) the rotor blades
slightly out of the wind. Conversely, the blades are turned back into the wind whenever the
wind drops again.

The pitch mechanism is usually operated using hydraulics or electric stepper motors.

Wind speed statistics- probability distributions

The probability density function (PDF) of wind speed is important in numerous wind energy
applications. A large number of studies have been published in scientific literature related to
renewable energies that propose the use of a variety of PDFs to describe wind speed
frequency distributions. In this paper a review of these PDFs is carried out. The flexibility
and usefulness of the PDFs in the description of different wind regimes (high frequencies of
null winds, unimodal, bimodal, bitangential regimes, etc.) is analysed for a wide collection of
models.

The wind speed distribution determines the performance of wind energy systems for a
given location and time quite well. When the wind speed probability distribution is known,
the wind energy distribution can easily be obtained.

It has two parameters—the mean and the standard deviation. The Weibull distribution and
the lognormal distribution are other common continuous distributions. Both of
these distributions can fit skewed data. Distribution parameters are values that apply to
entire populations.

Weibull distribution

The Weibull distribution is often a good approximation for the wind speed distribution: A
is the Weibull scale parameter in m/s; a measure for the characteristic wind speed of
the distribution. A is proportional to the mean wind speed. k is the Weibull form parameter.

Lognormal Distribution
In probability theory, a log-normal (or lognormal) distribution is a continuous
probability distribution of a random variable whose logarithm is normally distributed.
Thus, if the random variable X is log-normally distributed, then Y = ln(X) has a
normal distribution.
WIND SPEED AND POWER-CUMULATIVE DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS
To predict energy delivered by a wind turbine requires linking the power curve for the
machine to a statistical model of the wind regime. Beginning with a probability density
function, f(v), recall that the total area under a pdf curve is equal to one, and the area between
any two wind speeds is the probability that the wind is between those speeds. Therefore, the
probability that the wind is less than some specified wind speed V is given by

The integral F(V) in Equation above is given a special name: the cumulative distribution
function. The probability that the wind V is less than 0 is 0, and the probability that the wind
is less than infinity is 1, so F(V) has the following constraints: