Wind Energy

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/wind-energy

Introduction

### Course Review: Wind Energy on Coursera In an era where renewable energy is not just a choice but a necessity, understanding wind energy's vital role is crucial. The "Wind Energy" course on Coursera offers a comprehensive overview of wind energy engineering, making it an excellent option for those eager to dive into this pivotal field. Whether you are a beginner seeking general insights or an aspiring wind energy engineer, this course provides a profound foundation for your journey. #### Course Overview From the experts in Denmark—the leading nation in wind energy production—this course encompasses the essential disciplines of wind energy research. The course is designed to equip students with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills essential for a successful career in the wind energy sector. #### Course Structure and Modules The course is structured into several key modules, each focusing on different aspects of wind energy. Let’s break down some of the most compelling sections: 1. **Wind Energy Economics**: Understand the financial implications of wind farm projects with insights from Lena Kitzing. This module covers the cost of energy from wind, allowing students to perform calculations that assess potential projects economically. This practical approach is essential for anyone looking to enter the field, as financial viability is key to successful project implementation. 2. **Introduction to Wind Atlases and the Global Wind Atlas**: Jake Badger introduces the importance of assessing wind conditions, emphasizing how geographical features influence wind flow. By the end of this module, students will be adept at using the Global Wind Atlas to identify wind climates—a critical skill for resource assessment. 3. **Wind Farm Design and Optimization**: This module highlights the importance of systems engineering in designing efficient wind farms. Students learn how to optimize turbine placement and design to achieve low energy costs—an essential skill for future wind energy engineers. 4. **Load Measurements and Remote Sensing for Wind Energy**: Kenneth Thomsen and Mikael Sjöholm delve into measuring loads on turbines and the latest remote sensing technologies. Understanding these concepts is crucial for ensuring turbine efficiency and longevity. 5. **Fatigue Phenomena and Life Prediction**: With Martin Alexander Eder leading this module, students explore high cycle fatigue, one of the leading causes of turbine failure. This knowledge is paramount for anyone involved in turbine design and operational safety. 6. **Blade Design and Manufacturing**: Phillip Haselbach takes you through the iterative process of designing and manufacturing wind turbine blades, ensuring you understand the complexities involved in bringing them to life. 7. **Introduction to HVDC**: Cathy Suo discusses high voltage direct current (HVDC) technology's role in offshore wind energy, a crucial area as we expand our capabilities in renewable energy transmission. #### Interaction and Community One of the standout features of this course is the Coursera forum, which fosters a strong community of learners. Students can engage with one another and the course instructors, facilitating discussions that deepen understanding and allow for networking opportunities. #### Conclusion and Recommendation The "Wind Energy" course on Coursera is not just an academic exercise; it is a vital stepping stone toward a career in one of the most promising sectors of the energy industry. Its comprehensive syllabus covers the essential elements of wind energy engineering, from economics to practical applications, making it ideal for both novices and experienced professionals looking to expand their knowledge. I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in renewable energy. With its expert instructors, interactive community, and in-depth curriculum, it stands out as an invaluable resource for those ready to contribute to the green energy revolution. Whether you're looking to enhance your professional skills or embark on a new career path, "Wind Energy" is an opportunity not to be overlooked.

Syllabus

About this course

Xiaoli Guo Larsén gives a brief overview of the course, including its overall learning objectives, course structure, course content, the teachers, and the Coursera forum for interactions. You will also see the recommended prerequisites for following the course and find out how to earn points towards your course certificate.

Lena Kitzing will teach you about financial aspects during the entire lifetime of a wind turbine. When you have completed the module, you will be able to perform simple calculations for assessing wind farm projects and for calculating the cost of energy from wind.

Jake Badger will explain why assessing wind conditions is important and how features in the landscape affect wind conditions at different scales. You will learn about the Global Wind Atlas and how it can be used to identify flow effects and explore wind climates and resources. Wind atlas validation and data download will also be presented

Wind farm design optimization is a key step in overall wind farm project development. Developers need to side what turbines to use, where to place them, and how to design the rest of the system (balance of system including electrical collection system, turbine foundations, and more). This module introduces systems engineering for wind energy applications where holistic optimization methods are used for designing wind farms with the best possible performance at the lowest possible cost – in other words, to achieve a low cost of energy.

Gregor Giebel presents an overview of wind power forecasting, especially the motivation, the typical data flow, some error sources, and some specialised models for other uses than trading bulk power day-ahead. Forecasting wind (and similarly, solar) power in a system with 30% or more of renewables is paramount, and has been used operatively for 30 years. The uncertainty of the weather forecast can be quantified using ensembles, and the error sources depend on the type of forecast. Gregor Giebel in the second video gives an overview of the typical users of forecasts, of the ways to evaluate forecasts which depend (and should depend) highly on the use case, and presents the IEA Wind Recommended Practice for the Implementation of Renewable Energy Forecasting Solutions, which also is used in the test.

Mike Courtney tells how and why we perform wind measurements in Wind Energy, including main parameters that are necessary to measure, different instruments and their technologies and functions.

Mikael Sjöholm takes you on a tour to the technology landscape of remote sensing for wind energy starting in part 1 with the basic principles of remote sensing of one wind component using Radar, Lidar, and Sodar. He then continues by describing the differences between pulsed and continuous-wave devices before reaching part 2, where the basic principles for remote sensing of several wind components are reached and some tasters of use-cases for remote sensing in the domain of wind energy are served.

Kenneth Thomsen: Why and how to measure loads on wind turbines? Watch the video and learn the background and the methods!

In this lecture Prof. Jens N. Sørensen presents a derivation of the Betz limit, which gives the theoretical upper limit for the power production of a horizontal axis wind turbine. The derivation is based on 1D momentum theory and shows that no more than 59.3% of the available power in the wind can be exploited in the rotor of a wind turbine.

In part-1 video, Mac Gaunaa derives models for the ideal power production of simple drag- and lift-driven wind energy extraction devices from first principles analysis. These models reveal the key characteristics of the two different ways of extracting energy from wind, and is used to show which parameters influence the power, and what type of devices have the greatest power production potential per device area. In part-2 video , Mac Gaunaa uses the same set of key elements to explain the main operation principle for four different wind extraction devices: (1) Horizontal axis wind turbine, (2)Vertical axis giromill wind turbine, (3)Vertical axis drag turbine, (4)Ground generation crosswind kite.

Lars P. Mikkelsen demonstrates, in the first part of the lecture on composite materials for wind energy, how composite materials are used in wind turbine blades. Non-crimp glass fiber composites and pultruded carbon fiber composites will be introduced and the dominating loads working in a turbine blade will be shown. The second part of the lecture on composite materials for wind energy will show how to predict the stiffness of a composite from the properties of the constituents (fiber and matrix). During this, a big difference between the material stiffness in the fiber direction and transverse to the fiber direction is demonstrated. In the third and last part of the lecture on composite materials for wind energy, a procedure for testing and predicting the lifetime of composite materials is given. This will be used to predict the number of load cycles a composite material is expected to survive when loaded at a certain load-level or reversed which load level is allowed if a certain number of load cycles is required.

Martin Alexander Eder will in Part 1 teach Fatigue Phenomenon. High cycle fatigue is to date among the most frequent root causes for structural failure in wind turbines which need to endure billions of load cycles during their lifespan. Join me in this video to learn more about the fascinating phenomenon - high cycle fatigue - in wind turbine materials. Let us take an excursion starting at the nanostructure of different materials to observe where fatigue originates and how it evolves by zooming out across the characteristic length scales from micro to macro. This video provides an overview of the fundamental inner workings of the high cycle fatigue phenomenon and the differences observed in metallic materials such as steel and fibre-polymer composite materials, both of which being prominently represented in modern wind turbines. The observations made in this video are the steppingstone for understanding the process of fatigue life predictions presented in the second video – Fatigue life prediction. In part 2, he teaches Fatigue life prediction. It is recommended to watch the first video before embarking on watching fatigue life prediction to connect observation with application. In this video we take the observations made previously and learn how to apply them to make meaningful quantitative predictions of the fatigue life of steels as well as fiber-polymer composite materials. The focus of this video is put on the uniaxial SN-approach as the best-established method in industry. Light is shed on the experimental procedures involved to generate SN-curves and how they are used to generate constant life diagrams.

Xiao Chen introduces structural testing of rotor blades and their subcomponents using state-of-the-art experimental methods including measurements and inspection. In addition, this lecture introduces advanced finite element modeling to predict structural failure and damage where both simulation accuracy and efficiency are highlighted.

Phillip Haselbach: The lecture intends on introducing you to the design and manufacturing of wind turbine blade structures. In the lecture Blade Design and Manufacturing you will learn how a typical design procedure of a wind turbine blade structure looks. During the lecture, the iterative design process from the idea to the final product is demonstrated. Moreover, the lecture focusses on the manufacturing process, where the different steps from the design of the moulds to the layup, vacuum infusion process and curing procedure will be explained as well as the final assembly of a wind turbine blade is illustrated.

Cathy Suo provides introduction to VSC (voltage source converter) technology of HVDC (high voltage direct current) and its application in offshore wind energy

Hjörtur Jóhannsson in the first lecture tells about frequency in electric power systems and how it is controlled. This answers questions: i) what causes system frequency to change? Ii) how to ensure a stable frequency? Iii) how do fluctuations in active power impact the system frequency? In the second lecture he explains the impact that short-term fluctuations in wind speed have on power system frequency. This includes explanations of the role the inertia of the individual wind turbines (WTs) has in reducing the impact of wind fluctuations and explanations of the effect of having numerous WTs in a wind farm in reducing the impact of wind fluctuations in the active power output the wind farm.