In the run-up to a governmental invitation to tender for the construction offshore wind farms in the Languedoc Rousillon, coastal municipalities have been voicing fear about their potential impact on the tourist industry. To understand how offshore wind farms may affect tourism, we conducted a choice experiment with coastal tourists in Languedoc Rousillon. We elicited willingness to pay and wil...

A wind turbine blade's structural dynamic response is simulated and analysed with the goal of characterizing the presence and severity of a shear web disbond. Computer models of a 5 MW offshore utility-scale wind turbine were created to develop effective algorithms for detecting such damage. Through data analysis and with the use of blade measurements, a shear web disbond was quantified accordi...

It is now widely accepted that a shift towards renewable energy production is needed in order to avoid further anthropogenically induced climate change. The ocean provides a largely untapped source of renewable energy. As a result, harvesting electrical power from the wind and tides has sparked immense government and commercial interest but with relatively little detailed understanding of the p...

Uncertainties related to fatigue damage estimation of non-linear systems are highly dependent on the tail behaviour and extreme values of the stress range distribution. By using a combination of the First Order Reliability Method (FORM) and Monte Carlo simulations (MCS), the accuracy of the fatigue estimations may be improved for the same computational efforts. The method is applied to a bottom...

Wind turbines components are subject to considerable stresses and fatigue due to extreme environmental conditions to which they are exposed, especially those located offshore. With this aim, the present work explores two different approaches on fatigue damage estimation and remaining useful life predictions of wind turbine blades. The first approach uses the rainflow counting algorithm. The sec...

Offshore wind energy is being developed on a very large scale in the European seas. The objective of developing wind energy offshore is to capture greater wind speeds than are encountered onshore and as a result more energy. With this also come more challenges in the design of wind turbines due to the hostile offshore environment. Currently the standards for offshore wind turbines prescribe a s...

This paper focuses on generic Type 4 wind turbine generators models, their applicability in modern HVDC connections and their capability to provide advanced ancillary services therefrom. A point-to-point HVDC offshore connection is considered. Issues concerning coordinated HVDC and wind farm control as well as the need of a communication link are discussed. Two possible control configurations a...

Fossil Fuels are always considered as environmental pollutants. On the other hand, the political and economic situations highly affect the price of these fuels. Offshore wind and wave, as renewable energy sources, represent the better alternatives for electricity generation. Therefore, it is necessary that wind speeds effectively be estimated due to the absence of field measurements of the wind...

Offshore wind turbines have been installed in increasing water depths over the last years. Support structures with monopile or gravity based foundation could successfully be used for all realized offshore-projects, but the trend of increasing water depths reached a level that makes application of those relatively simple types of support structures inappropriate. New concepts like tripods or lat...