The energy transition means that more and more wind farms are being built in favorable offshore sites like the North Sea. The wind farms affect each other as they interact with the boundary layer flow. This phenomenon is a topic of current research by the industry and academia as it can have significant technical and financial impacts. In the present study, we use data from the Alpha Ventus wind farm site to investigate the effects of inter-farm interactions. Alpha Ventus is the first offshore German wind farm located in the North Sea with a fully equipped measurement platform, FINO1, in the near vicinity. We look at the effects on the wind conditions measured at FINO1 before and after the beginning of operation of the neighboring farms. We show how measured quantities like turbulence intensity, wind speed distributions, and wind shear are evolving from the period when the park was operating alone in the area to the period when farms were built and operate in close proximity (1.4–15 km). Moreover, we show how the wind turbine's response in terms of loads and generator and pitch activity is affected using data from a turbine that is in the vicinity of the mast. The results show the wake effects in the directions influenced by the wind farms according to their distance with increased turbulence intensity, reduced wind speeds, and increased structural loading.

The main objective of the presented work is the validation of the simulation tool FAST.Farm for the calculation of power and structural loads in single wake situations; the basis for the validation is the measurement database of the operating offshore wind farm alpha ventus. The approach is described in detail and covers the calibration of the aeroelastic turbine model, transfer of environmental conditions to simulations, and comparison between simulations and adequately filtered measurements. It is shown that FAST.Farm accurately predicts power and structural load distributions over wind direction with discrepancies of less than 10 % for most of the cases compared to the measurements. Additionally, the frequency response of the structure is investigated, and it is calculated by FAST.Farm in good agreement with the measurements. In general, the calculation of fatigue loads is improved with a wake-added turbulence model added to FAST.Farm in the course of this study.

This study proposes two methodologies for improving the accuracy of wind turbine load assessment under wake conditions by combining nacelle-mounted lidar measurements with wake wind field reconstruction techniques. The first approach consists of incorporating wind measurements of the wake flow field, obtained from nacelle lidars, into random, homogeneous Gaussian turbulence fields generated using the Mann spectral tensor model. The second approach imposes wake deficit time series, which are derived by fitting a bivariate Gaussian shape function to lidar observations of the wake field, on the Mann turbulence fields. The two approaches are numerically evaluated using a virtual lidar simulator, which scans the wake flow fields generated with the dynamic wake meandering (DWM) model, i.e., the target fields. The lidar-reconstructed wake fields are then input into aeroelastic simulations of the DTU 10 MW wind turbine for carrying out the load validation analysis. The power and load time series, predicted with lidar-reconstructed fields, exhibit a high correlation with the corresponding target simulations, thus reducing the statistical uncertainty (realization-to-realization) inherent to engineering wake models such as the DWM model. We quantify a reduction in power and loads' statistical uncertainty by a factor of between 1.2 and 5, depending on the wind turbine component, when using lidar-reconstructed fields compared to the DWM model results. Finally, we show that the number of lidar-scanned points in the inflow and the size of the lidar probe volume are critical aspects for the accuracy of the reconstructed wake fields, power, and load predictions.

Inflow wind field measurements from nacelle-based lidar systems offer great potential for different applications including turbine control, load validation, and power performance measurements. On floating wind turbines nacelle-based lidar measurements are affected by the dynamic behavior of the floating foundations. Therefore, the effects on lidar wind speed measurements induced by floater dynamics must be understood. In this work, we investigate the influence of floater motions on wind speed measurements from forward-looking nacelle-based lidar systems mounted on floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) and suggest approaches for correcting motion-induced effects. We use an analytical model, employing the guide for the expression of uncertainty in measurements (GUM) methodology and a numerical lidar simulation for the quantification of uncertainties. It is found that the uncertainty of lidar wind speed estimates is mainly caused by the fore–aft motion of the lidar, resulting from the pitch displacement of the floater. Therefore, the uncertainty is heavily dependent on the amplitude and the frequency of the pitch motion. The bias of 10 min mean wind speed estimates is mainly influenced by the mean pitch angle of the floater and the pitch amplitude. We correct motion-induced biases in time-averaged lidar wind speed measurements with a model-based approach, employing the developed analytical model for uncertainty and bias quantification. Testing of the approach with simulated dynamics from two different FOWT concepts shows good results with remaining mean errors below 0.1 m s⁻¹. For the correction of motion-induced fluctuation in instantaneous measurements, we use a frequency filter to correct fluctuations caused by floater pitch motions for instantaneous measurements. The correction approach's performance depends on the pitch period and amplitude of the FOWT design.

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) are equipped with various sensors that provide valuable data for turbine monitoring and control. Due to technical and operational challenges, load estimations for mooring lines and fairleads can be difficult and expensive to obtain accurately. This research delves into a methodology where simulated floater motion measurements and wind speed measurements, derived from forward-looking nacelle-based lidar, are utilized as inputs for different types of neural networks to estimate fairlead tension time series and damage equivalent loads (DELs). Fairlead tension is intrinsically linked to the dynamics and the position of the floater. Therefore, we systematically analyze the individual contribution of floater dynamics to the prediction quality of fairlead tension time series and DELs. Wind speed measurements obtained via nacelle-based lidar on floating offshore wind turbines are inherently influenced by the platform's dynamics, notably the rotational pitch displacement and surge displacement of the floater. Consequently, the lidar wind speed data indirectly contain the dynamic behavior of the floater, which, in turn, governs the fairlead loads. This study leverages lidar-measured line-of-sight (LOS) wind speeds to estimate fairlead tensions. Training data for the model are generated by the aeroelastic wind turbine simulation tool, openFAST, in conjunction with the numerical lidar simulation framework ViConDAR. The fairlead tension time series are predicted using long short-term memory (LSTM) networks. DEL predictions are made using three different approaches. First, DELs are calculated from predicted time series; second, DELs are predicted using a sequence-to-one LSTM architecture, and third, DELs are predicted using a convolutional neural network architecture. Results indicate that fairlead tension time series and DELs can be accurately estimated from floater motion time series. Further, we found that lidar LOS measurements do not improve time series or DEL predictions if motion measurements are available. However, using lidar measurements as model inputs for DEL predictions leads to similar accuracies as using displacement measurements of the floater.