Wind constitutes one of the major environmental factors affecting the design and performance of built environment. Each country has its unique climatic wind conditions, and the way in which these are considered and implemented in the structural design, is important. An implementation or adoption of any new engineering design stipulations introduces a formidable challenge to the developers of the standards and the design profession. This has been experienced in some of the countries (e.g. the UK, Australia and the USA), where processes of modernising the outdated codifi cation took place in the past. Although both Poland and South Africa are currently at the early implementation stage of the new wind loading design stipulations, there is a major difference between the circumstances of the two countries. Poland, as an EU member state, has a compulsory obligation to adopt the new uniform standarisation requirements, within a stipulated time-frame. The South African code developers, after a thorough investigation process which will be highlighted in the paper, decided voluntarily to adopt the Eurocode as the primary model document.
The research paper presents the results of the dynamic analysis of an existing bar dome subjected to wind loads. The calculation model of the structure was constructed using the finite element method. The dome was subjected to the standard wind pressure, assuming that it is operates in a harmonic manner. The numerical analyses were performed with the application of Autodesk Robot and MES3D. The analysis focused on the impact of selected factors such as the frequency of forcing, wind gustiness coefficient and structural damping on the behaviour of structures.
A questionnaire inquiry on response to wind turbine noise was carried out on 361 subjects living in the vicinity of 8 wind farms. Current mental health status of respondents was assessed using Goldberg General Health Questionnaire GHQ-12. For areas where respondents lived, A-weighted sound pressure levels (SPLs) were calculated as the sum of the contributions from the wind power plants in the specific area.
Generally, 33.0% of respondents were annoyed outdoors by wind turbine noise at the calculated A-weighted SPL of 31-50 dB, while indoors the noise was annoying to 21.3% of them. The proportion of subjects evaluating the noise produced by operative wind turbines as annoying decreased with increasing the distance from the nearest wind turbine (27.6% at the distance of 400-800 m vs 14.3% at the distance above 800 m, p < 0.016). On the other hand, the higher was the noise level, the greater was the percentage of annoyed respondents (14.0% at SPL up to 40 dB vs 28.1% at SPL of 40-45 dB, p < 0.016). Besides noise and distance categories, subjective factors, such as general attitude to wind turbines, sensitivity to landscape littering and current mental health status, were found to have significant impact on the perceived annoyance. About 50% of variance in annoyance rating might be explained by the aforesaid subjective factors.
The article presents the consequences of the introduction of EU regulation 2016/631 for power park modules (PPMs), of which wind farms are a typical example. Analysing the yearlong course of changes in the generated power, the possibility of a typical wind farm meeting the requirements for the production and absorption of reactive power was checked. It was shown that in the selected cases it was necessary to introduce additional sources of reactive power on the side of the farm’s MV.
The aim of this paper is to answer the question: Are the Łódź Hills
useful for electrical energy production from wind energy or not? Due to
access to short-term data related to wind measurements (the period of
2008 and 2009) from a local meteorological station, the measure –
correlate – predict approach have been applied. Long-term (1979‒2016)
reference data were obtained from ECWMF
ERA-40 Reanalysis.
Artificial neural networks were used to calculate predicted wind speed.
The obtained average wind speed and wind power density was 4.21 ms⁻¹
and 70 Wm⁻¹, respectively, at 10 m above ground
level (5.51 ms⁻¹, 170 Wm⁻¹ at 50 m).
From the point of view of Polish wind conditions, Łódź Hills may be
considered useful for wind power engineering.
The purpose of the article is to present perspectives for the development of offshore wind farms in the leading, in this respect, country in the EU and in the world – Great Britain. Wind power plays a remarkable role in the process of ensuring energy security for Europe since in 2016 the produced wind energy met 10.4% of the European electricity demand while in 2017 it was already around 11.6%. The article analyses the capacity of wind farms, support systems offered by this country and the criteria related to the location of offshore wind farms. The research has been based on the analysis of legal acts, regulations, literature on the subject, information from websites. The article shows that in recent years, the production of energy at sea has been developing very rapidly, and the leading, in this matter, British offshore energy sector is character-ised by strong governmental support.
On the basis of 35 one-hour series of the measurement of the wind velocity, read out every two minutes, the wind structure at the Arctowski Station, situated on Admiralty Bay, King George Island, was analysed. Very strong turbulence was found with air flow directions from over the area of the Island (S, SW. W and NW) and laminarity with directions from SE, E, NE and partly N, i.e. when the air flows from Admiralty Bay or from over the open waters of Bransfield Strait. The qustiness coefficient, the relationship between the maximum and mean velocities and the intensity of turbulence were determined for the two flow types. Two extremely different cases, in terms of flow character, were considered, by determining for them the distributions of instantaneous velocities and those of oscillations.
Power spectrum techniques were applied to two time series of wind speed values recorded at the Arctowski Station in order to investigate the influence of turbulent and laminar air flow on the quasi-periodicity of the micro-scale wind structure.
The analysis of speed and direction distribution of upper wind in the layer up to 3500 m was carried out on the basis of pibal ascents performed over the Admiralty Bay (King George Island, South Shetland Islands).
The resistance parameters of timber structures decrease with time. It depends on the type of load and timber classes. Strength reduction effects, referred to as creep-rupture effects, due to long term loading at high stress ratio levels are known for many materials. Timber materials are highly affected by this reduction in strength with duration of load. Characteristic values of load duration and load duration factors are calibrated by means of using probabilistic methods. Three damage accumulation models are considered, that is Gerhard [1] model, Barret, Foschi[2] and Foshi Yao [3] models. The reliability is estimated by means of using representative short- and long-term limit states. Time variant reliability aspects are taken into account using a simple representative limit state with time variant strength and simulation of whole life time load processes. The parameters in these models are fitted by the Maximum Likelihood Methods using the data relevant for Polish structural timber. Based on Polish snow data over 45 years from mountain zone in: Zakopane – Tatra, Świeradów – Karkonosze, Lesko – Bieszczady, the snow load process parameters have been estimated. The reliability is evaluated using representative short – and long –term limit states, load duration factor kmod is obtained using the probabilistic model.
The dynamic development of wind power in recent years has generated the demand for production forecasting tools in wind farms. The data obtained from mathematical models is useful both for wind farm owners and distribution and transmission system operators. The predictions of production allow the wind farm operator to control the operation of the turbine in real time or plan future repairs and maintenance work in the long run. In turn, the results of the forecasting model allow the transmission system operator to plan the operation of the power system and to decide whether to reduce the load of conventional power plants or to start the reserve units.
The presented article is a review of the currently applied methods of wind power generation forecasting. Due to the nature of the input data, physical and statistical methods are distinguished. The physical approach is based on the use of data related to atmospheric conditions, terrain, and wind farm characteristics. It is usually based on numerical weather prediction models (NWP). In turn, the statistical approach uses historical data sets to determine the dependence of output variables on input parameters. However, the most favorable, from the point of view of the quality of the results, are models that use hybrid approaches. Determining the best model turns out to be a complicated task, because its usefulness depends on many factors. The applied model may be highly accurate under given conditions, but it may be completely unsuitable for another wind farm.