TSERI Lecture Series - Giacomo Valerio Iungo UT Dallas

December 04, 2017 | posted by The Institute

This past Friday the Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute was honored in hosting guest speaker Dr. Giacomo Valerio Iungo from the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Iungo presented on the innovation in wind energy research that his team is currenlty pioneering.

Abstract

Wind power harvesting is a complex process due to the variability of the wind field, wind turbulence and, consequently, to the challenges in designing optimized wind farms. Wind energy research encompasses investigations for prediction and characterization of the wind field, at the same time development of models to simulate operations of wind turbines and estimate their performance. At the WindFluX lab of UT Dallas, the evolution of the atmospheric wind field is characterized through wind LiDARs, state-of-the-art laser-based instruments probing the wind field in a range of about 5 km and high spatial resolution of about 20 m. LiDAR measurements are performed not only to characterize the wind field, but wind turbine wakes as well. Indeed, wind turbines extract energy from the wind field producing large regions with reduced wind speed and enhanced turbulence, which can be highly detrimental for the performance of downstream wind turbines. The LiDAR measurements are then leveraged to develop reduced order models for simulations of wind turbine operations and power capture. These reduced order models should inform about wind turbine performance and wakes with adequate accuracy and low computational costs in order to be compelling tools for wind farm optimization. The entire research framework will be described together with the application for a utility-scale wind farm.