With the increasing size of wind turbines in terms of their dimensions and capacity, structural design optimization for their blades is becoming all the more important. This study suggests an improved optimization framework. Blade optimization is performed in two stages: the ply lay-up pattern of the spar cap in the initial blade configuration based on the existing configuration, followed by the cross-sectional design optimization at several spanwise locations. The genetic algorithm is adopted and, in terms of the structural integrity evaluation, the final configuration results are found to be safe; in addition, the number of plies in the spar cap rapidly decreases through the two-stage design optimization procedure. As a result, the blade is lighter, and the lighter blade also reduces the applied load on the wind turbine. This will have an excellent effect that leads to a reduction in the weight of the entire turbine system.

Within the framework of blade aerodynamic design, the maximum aerodynamic efficiency, power production, and minimum thrust force are the targets to obtain. This paper describes an improved optimization framework for blade aerodynamic design under realistic conditions, while considering multiple design parameters. The relationship between the objective function and the design parameters, such as the chord length, maximum chord, and twist angle, were obtained by using the second-order response surface methodology (RSM). Moreover, the identified parameters were organized to optimize the aerodynamic design of the blades. Furthermore, the initial and optimized blade geometries were compared and showed that the performance of the optimized blade improved significantly. In fact, the efficiency was increased by approximately 10%, although its thrust was not varied. In addition, to demonstrate the improvement in the resulting optimized blades, the annual energy production (AEP) was estimated when installed in a specific regional location. The result showed a significant improvement when compared to the baseline blades. This result will be extended to a new perspective approach for a more robust optimal design of a wind turbine blade.

As the wind turbine size gets larger, the optimal design of blades, which is a major source of energy for the wind turbines and also the cause of loads, is becoming more important than anything else. Therefore, reducing the load on the blade should be the top priority in designing a blade. In this article, we studied the vibration control of the stiffened wind blades subjected to a wind load with piezoelectric sensors and actuators to mitigate fluctuations in loading and adding damping to the blade. The model is a laminated composite blade with a shear web and the PZT piezomaterial layers embedded on the top and bottom surfaces act as a sensor and actuator, respectively. A uniformly distributed external wind load is assumed over the entire plate surface for simplicity. The first-order shear deformation (FSDT) theory is adopted, and Hamilton’s principle is used to derive the finite element equation of motion. The modal superposition technique and the Newmark- β \beta method are used in numerical analysis to calculate the dynamic response. Using the constant gain negative velocity feedback control algorithm, vibration characteristics and transient responses are compared. Furthermore, vibration control at various locations of the shear webs subjected to an external load is discussed in detail. Through various calculation results performed in this study, this article proposes a method of designing a blade that can reduce the load by actively responding to the external load acting on the wind turbine blade.

Every wind turbine is subject to fluctuations in power generation, depending on climatic conditions. When electricity supply exceeds demand, wind turbines are forced to implement curtailment, causing a reduction in generation efficiency and commercial loss to turbine owners. Since the frequency and amount of curtailment of wind turbines increases as the amount of renewable energy become higher on Jeju Island in South Korea, Jeju is configuring a Power to Gas (P2G) water-electrolysis system that will be connected to an existing wind farm to use the “wasted energy”. In this study, economic analysis was performed by calculating the production cost of green hydrogen, and sensitivity analysis evaluated the variance in hydrogen cost, depending on several influential factors. Approaches to lower hydrogen costs are necessary for the following reasons. The operating company needs a periodical update of hydrogen sale prices by reflecting a change in the system margin price (SMP) with the highest sensitivity to hydrogen cost. Technical development to reduce hydrogen costs in order to reduce power consumption for producing hydrogen and a decrease in annual reduction rate for the efficiency of water electrolysis is recommended. Discussions and research regarding government policy can be followed to lower the hydrogen cost.

The most important step in the design of wind turbine and blades is integrated load analysis, which is usually designed to describe a three-dimensional structure using a one-dimensional beam element; represents a three-dimensional blade with aerodynamic and structural information. In this regard, one-dimensional elements are required to accurately represent all the structural properties of a three-dimensional component. Most of the previous methods regarded the blade as a linear structure, resulting in limitations associated with nonlinearities. The geometry of the blades has a significant change along the length, and the composition of the materials used inside the blades is very complex, so these methods are not suitable for extracting the characteristics of the blades. In this paper, a new design scheme of a one-dimensional beam modeling method is proposed based on the blade sectional element concept that is easier and faster to apply without performing nonlinear analysis. In addition, the validation of the accuracy of its numerical analysis results, the total mass and modal analysis results are compared between three-dimensional blade and one-dimensional blade.