3.2. Power Depending on Wind
A knowledge about the wind speed is crucial to determine the power of wind that flows through a known cross-section (in this particular case – through the disc of the wind turbine, which frontal area is denoted as
). The power may be calculated as:
The abovementioned formula describes the power that is supplied to the wind turbine. However, it is impossible to consume all the wind power, as if the efficiency were equal to 100%. It is clearly impossible to achieve, as the power consumed by the wind turbine is related to the reduction in flow speed in front of the rotor and behind it. Thus, such efficiency would require that the flow speed shortly behind the rotor is equal to zero. Such a situation can be easily compared with the Carnot heat cycle, where the efficiency is related to the difference in temperatures.
The efficiency of the wind turbine is defined as the Betz coefficient – named after the German engineer, Albert Betz, who introduced this fundamental equation in 1919 and published shortly after in [
33]:
According to Betz, the efficiency of the wind turbine can be assessed using the Rankine – Froude actuator disk theory, which defines the flow through a rotor as a unifor8m, single-dimensional, axisymmetric and steady flow. Obviously the rotor is simplified to the infinitely thin disc, with no hub nor blades; consequently no torque is introduced in this model. The diameter and speed of the flow varies with the distance from the rotor.
This simple model allows us to determine the force acting on the flow due to rotor presence [
34]:
Where: index “1” refers to the cross section far in front of the rotor disc (upstream), index “2” – far behind it (downstream) and parameters with no index refers to the disc position.
The power is equal to:
and consequently:
On the other hand, the power can be expressed as the rate of change in kinetic energy (from upstream position to the downstream one):
As we compare both forms of the power and include the mass flow rate
Eventually, if we eliminate air density and disc area and include the reduced multiplication formula, we get:
Eventually we may see that the velocity of the flow in the rotor disc plane is equal to arithmetic mean of velocities upstream and downstream – as long as air density
, rotor disc area
, velocity in the rotor disc
and velocity reduction
are not equal to 0.
The latter equation allows us to rewite the formula defining the turbine power:
Let us implement the “interference factor” as a ratio of velocities downstream and upstream:
Then the extractable turbine power may be expressed with the equation:
The abovementioned equation shows clearly that the power of the wind turbine is proportional to the cube of the upstream flow speed V1 – which is simply the incoming wind speed. It also is, intuitively, proportional to the rotor area and is somehow dependent on the interference factor μ.
As we developed the formulae describing both wind power and extractable power of the turbine, we may eventually calculate the Betz coefficient, i.e. the turbine efficiency:
Eventually the Betz coefficient is dependent (in direct way) only on the interference factor:
The
function is a third-order parabola with a single local maximum in the range of
between 0 and 1. The optimum value of the interference factor
can be found by simple differentiation and solving the equation:
The derivative of Betz coefficient is thus equal to:
This equation has clearly two possible solutions:
but the latter one is a trivial solution
, which leads to non-physical condition:
The other solution gives us, however, the optimum value of the interference factor:
which means that
– so the flow speed behind the turbine disc should be three times lower than the wind speed.
If we substitute this value to
Błąd! Nie można odnaleźć źródła odwołania. we may easily check that the maximum value of the Betz coefficient is equal to 16/27=59.26%. This value is referred as Betz Limit or Betz Criterion and – despite it was formulated over a century ago, it remains valid for all types of wind turbines. On the other hand, it is only a theoretical maximum value, which not includes air flow friction, blades roughness and all other energy losses. Modern wind turbines reaches lower practical values of maximum efficiency, around 40% [
34].
The maximum efficiency can be achieved only in one, specific conditions – depending, amongst others, on the turbine configuration. It can be easily spotted in
Figure 5, where the C
p has been presented in the range of tip speed ratio. The latter parameter defines the linear speed of the blade’s tip related to the wind speed:
On the other hand, the tip speed ratio is the nondimensional coefficient, which defines the turbine operating point, but is not measured directly. The TSR depends on wind speed and revolutions speed of the turbine, which is also affected by the wind speed and turbine settings (like blades pitch angle). Thus it is convenient to analyse the C
p plotted directly versus wind speed – see
Figure 5. Clearly the Betz coefficient has its maximum for the wind speed of about 8m/s in the presented example – but it depends on the turbine settings. In practical applications, two control strategy are typically implemented [
36]: blade pitch control, stall control.
Both strategies are aimed at ensuring the safety of the turbine if the limit wind speed (upper cut-off speed) is exceeded. In first case, the blades pitch is reduced by a hydraulic actuator or an electric stepper motor, to reduce lift coefficient which powers the rotor’s revolution. Meanwhile stall-controlled turbines use passive control systems, i.e. the blades’ geometry is designed to direct the wake behind one blade towards another one, if the wind speed achieves its limit. Eventually, the power output versus wind speed gives a well-known power curve (
Figure 6).
The turbine should operate with the highest efficiency as the wind speed increases to the nominal/rated value. In this case the power output becomes maximum from the generator’s point of view, thus it should not be further increased [
37,
38]. Pitch-controlled turbines maintain the constant level of the power, while stall-controlled ones are designed such that the rotor efficiency “collapses” at high wind speeds. Due to the blade design, this behavior is intrinsic, and no active control systems are required to achieve the aerodynamic efficiency reduction [
36] (
Figure 7).
It should be underlined that the power of the wind turbine is related to the cube of wind velocity, which in line is dependent on the height above the ground – see
Błąd! Nie można odnaleźć źródła odwołania.. Eventually the power ratio is equal to the height above the ground in the power of
.
While the mean value of the wind speed, or rather its most probable values are determinable in the mesoscale, the exponent α is strongly dependent on the surroundings of the wind turbine, as it modifies the shear layer of the wind. This effect can be compared with the impact of the surface roughness on the boundary layer thickness, when the fluid flows along this surface. To determine the exponent α, it is convenient to define some categories of the terrain: it is clearly expected that in the clear area, like a seashore, the shear layer will be much thinner than in densely populated cities. In Poland (as in other EU countries) the terrain categories and respective exponents are proposed by architectural standard PN-EN 1991-1-4:2008 with its national annex [
32]. The categories have been summarized in
Table 2, as well as wind power ratios: between 160m and 60m, between 60m and 10m.
It can be clearly seen that the power of the wind turbine located at 60m is nearly 2 times higher than in 10m (in case of an open terrain) and even 3.63 times higher in case of densely populated area – however placing the high wind turbine in such terrain is not likely due to formal prohibitions. Further increase of the height to 160 m can bring further growth in power, from 1.38 to about 2 times. It should be, however, strongly reminded that only the height is changed in this analysis and the rotor area remains the same. In practice the rotor diameter is increased with the hub height, to maximize the disc area.
It should be noted that the energy should be integrated along the height, since the wind speed alters along it, and thus is not constant on the rotor disc area. Omitting this is, however, reasonable and a difference due to this simplification is about 5% [
26].
The air density typically may be calculated using the Clapeyron’s ideal gas law, assuming that the air is dry. However, if the air humidity is significant, it can be also included. The air density is then given by the equation:
As it has been presented in
Figure 8, the air density is strongly related with the temperature, and in a smaller part with the humidity (especially in higher temperatures) and pressure.
It should be again underlined that the Weibull distribution of the daily-averaged wind speed still is an approximation, which omits some observation. For instance, the measurements of wind speed during the year showed that in most meteorological stations in Poland the highest wind speed values have been achieved during the winter – from December to March. Meanwhile, the lowest values have been recorded in July and August [
39]. Furthermore, the daily variation of the wind speed is also clearly observable. Koźmiński and Michalska in [
39] have compared the measurement taken at 7:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. – see
Table 2. According to that, the greatest wind speed has been observed around noon – especially in the spring, from March to May. In the morning the wind is significantly weaker and in the evening – the weakest. The monthly variation of wind speed is the greatest in February, March and September, while in January, May and June the variation coefficient decays (
Table 3).