Renewable Energy, Vol.171, 735-746, 2021
A case study of space-time performance comparison of wind turbines on a wind farm
This paper presents an academia-industry joint case study, which was conducted to quantify and compare multi-year changes in power production performance of multiple turbines scattered over a midsize wind farm. This analysis is referred to as a space-time performance comparison. One key aspect in power performance analysis is to have the wind and environmental inputs controlled for. This research employs, in a sequential fashion, two principal modeling components to exercise tight control of multiple input conditionsda covariate matching method, followed by a Gaussian process model-based functional comparison. The analysis method is applied to a wind farm that houses 66 turbines on a moderately complex terrain. The power production and environmental data span nearly four years, during which period the turbines have gone through multiple technical upgrades. The space-time analysis presents a quantitative and global picture showing how turbines differ relative to each other as well as how each of them changes over time. ? 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.