ISRN LUTFD2/TFRT--5909--SE Wind Speed Prediction Models and Their Use in Wind Turbine Control

Sponsor ing organization Ti tle and subti t le Wind speed prediction models and their use in wind turbine control Wind energy production is a section that became bigger and bigger thanks to the interests in finding new ways to produce energy that do not involve fossil fuels because of environment concerns, because of their costs and because of their limited amount. Even though wind energy was exploited also in the past, for example in wind mills, it is with wind turbines that all the problems affecting these systems started to be taken into account and to be studied deeply. Rising sizes, flexible materials used, aerodynamics, unfriendly environments, wind variability are some of the challenges to face in order to improve efficiency and extend the life and reliability of these systems. It is in this wide and various context that wind prediction models are needed to understand and to know in advance, in a wind farm, how wind will change and which effects it will have on a turbine and the following ones. In this work an approach to forecast the wind at downwind positions, using upwind turbines as sensors, is proposed. The work is based on real data from Thanet Wind Farm provided by Vestas Wind Systems A/S. The models found are relevant only for the sequences taken into account but they show the possibility to exploit existing turbines as wind sensors and open the way for further development of this work. This argument appear to be (to my knowledge) new, since in literature almost no references were found