Experts on Wind Energy Gather in TCD to Discuss Next Generation Wind Turbines
Posted on: 19 November 2010
The health monitoring of next generation wind turbines was the subject of a Winter School organised by Trinity College’s School of Engineering recently (November, 15-19th). As the wind turbines grow larger in size, and produce more power, system identification and health monitoring capabilities become key in ensuring efficient and reliable operation of the generating infrastructure, and subsequent security of power supply. The Winter School focused on the applications of Signal Processing, Wireless Sensor Networking and System Identification principles for the efficient and reliable operation of next generation wind turbines.
Several key note addresses were delivered which included recent trends in controller design and implementation for wind turbines, reviewed by Mr Tony Mercer from Garrad Hassan, Bristol, leading consultants on wind energy and wind turbines. Mr Pat Blount from Dunmore Wind Power emphasised the growing importance of condition and health monitoring of wind turbines from a wind farm developers perspective and Dr Tomasz Barszcz from EnergoControl presented some case studies on new signal processing techniques used in system identification and health monitoring for wind turbines. In all, ten senior scientists from the field of wind energy, drawn from nine different European countries, were joined by over 30 international researchers from both industry and academia for the event.
The Winter School was organised as part of a €3.2 million EU FP7 funded project that is led by Trinity College Dublin. The project is co-ordinated by Professor Biswajit Basu from Civil, Structural & Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering, and has international partners from Universities, Research Laboratories and SMEs such as Aalborg University, Risø DTU from Denmark; Sheffield University from the UK; Stanford and Rice Universities from the USA. The aim of the project is to develop new tools, exploiting ICT and emerging technologies, for increasing the operational efficiency and reliability of next generation wind turbines. Professor Basu’s research in TCD focuses on the development of new control strategies for the turbine blades and tower, with a view to maximising the power production by allowing the wind turbine to operate under varying environmental conditions. Other TCD collaborators on this project include Dr Craig Meskell from Mechanical Engineering, who is working on wind turbine noise amelioration, and Dr Ciaran Mc Goldrick from the School of Computer Science and Statistics who is focusing on distributed Wireless Sensor Networking deployments for health monitoring. The interfaculty TCD research activity in this project involves the development of intelligent wireless sensor networking nodes which will collaboratively monitor and manage the health of a wind turbine structure and systems.
Trinity in the News: