Analyses of the Extensible Blade in Improving Wind Energy Production at Sites with Low-Class Wind Resource

This paper describes the feasibility analysis of an innovative, extensible blade technology. The blade aims to significantly improve the energy production of a wind turbine, particularly at locations with unfavorable wind conditions. The innovative ‘smart’ blade will be extended at low wind speed to harvest more wind energy; on the other hand, it will be retracted to its original shape when the wind speed is above the rated wind speed to protect the blade from damages by high wind loads. An established aerodynamic model is implemented in this paper to evaluate and compare the power output of extensible blades versus a baseline conventional blade. The model was first validated with a monitored power production curve based on the wind energy production data of a conventional turbine blade, which is subsequently used to estimate the power production curve of extended blades. The load-on-blade structures are incorporated as the mechanical criteria to design the extension strategies. Wind speed monitoring data at three different onshore and offshore sites around Lake Erie are used to predict the annual wind energy output with different blades. The effects of extension on the dynamic characteristics of blade are analyzed. The results show that the extensive blade significantly increases the annual wind energy production (up to 20% to 30%) with different blade extension strategies. It, therefore, has the potential to significantly boost wind energy production for utility-scale wind turbines located at sites with low-class wind resource.