Stochastic Analysis of the Power Output for a Wind Turbine

Edgar Anahua∗ and Frank Boettcher† , Stephan Barth† , Joachim Peinke†

ForWind - Center for Wind Energy Research,
University of Oldenburg
D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany Phone: +49-441-798-3577,
Fax: +49 441-798-3579
email: edgar.anahua@uni-oldenburg.de

Matthias Lange‡
energy & meteo systems GmbH
26129 Oldenburg, Germany

We present a stochastic analysis of the power output for a wind turbine based on a Langevin
equation to see how fluctuations in the wind speed will affect the power performance charateristics.
In particular we show by means of a simple model, that the averaged power characteristics
determined by the IEC 61400-12 standard, varies with different turbulent wind fields. Furthermore,
we show that the mean power output is affected by the dynamical reaction of a wind turbine
on wind fluctuations. We propose a method to extract proper power characteristic of the wind
turbine from measured power output data and simultaneously measured wind data. This power
characteristic is independent of the averaging procedure.

I. INTRODUCTION flow distortion (e.g., roughness, buildings, orography)

For the determination of the power curve of a wind
turbine generator system (WTGS) one uses the IEC
standard [1, 2]. The power curve is obtained by means
of 10 min averages of longitudinal wind speed at the hub
hight and power output measurements:
hui → hL(u)i .
and specific meteorological conditions (e.g., thermal
stabilities, wind shear) are not considered [3–5]. See
Fig.1. All these aspects affect the power output and also
relaxation (dynamical response) of the WTGS would
lead to a different power output [6].
The power curve, which is denoted by L(u) ∝ u3 , is a
nonlinear function of the wind velocity which leads to
the following inequality:

This standard procedure is limited to the local L(hui) 6= hL(u)i .

conditions because wind fluctuations produced by
Currently a Taylor expansion of second order is com-
monly developed in order to include wind fluctuations
[4, 7].:

1 ∂ 2 L(hui) 2
hL(u)i = L(hui) + σ . (1)
2 ∂hui2
0
Where σ = hu 2 i is the variance of wind velocity
fluctuations. But the distribution of wind fluctuations
presents an anomalous statistic around 10min mean
velocity, see Fig.2. Therefore
0
higher order moments of
the wind fluctuations hu n i with u = hui + u0 are needed
FIG. 1: a) Typical fluctuations of the wind power output in order to predict them more accurately [8, 9].
measurements of a small WTGS of 50Watt, 1sec mean val-
ues. b) Wind power curve of a large WTGS according to the
standard method. hL(u)i ∝ h(hui + u0 )3 i (2)
0
3 3
= hu i + 3huiσ + hu i . (3)

∗ Also In the following we present a stochastic analysis of

at the Energy and Semiconductor Research Laboratory, De-
partment of Physics, University of Oldenburg. the power output for a WTGS based on a Langevin
† Electronic address: frank.boettcher@uni-oldenburg.de equation to see how fluctuations in the wind speed will
‡ URL: http://www.energymeteo.de affect the power performance charateristic. A derivation
 2

rel. frequency

103

102

101

100
-4 0 4
(u-µ) [m/s] FIG. 3: a) Schematic illustration of relaxation effects on the
instantaneous power output of a WTGS. b) Relaxations on
FIG. 2: The figure shows an example of an anomalous distri- the power curve.
bution of the wind velocity around a 10min mean value.

D(1) describes the deterministic evolution of L(t) and

of dynamical equations for the power output of a WTGS D(2) reflects the influence of noise. D (1) is called drift-
from measured data will be presented. We start with and D(2) diffusion coefficient. Γ(t) is the fluctuating
the presentation of the dynamical relaxation description Langevin force. D (1) and D(2) can be evaluated by the
of a WTGS. Next, we evaluate the deterministic and conditional moments.
the stochastic content of the power output dynamics
by means of a Langevin equation. Finally, an advanced
1
(dynamical) power curve is derived by fix-points of the D(1) (L) = lim hL(t + τ ) − L(t)i |L(t)=L (8)
τ →0 τ
deterministic dynamics.
1

D(2) (L) = lim (L(t + τ ) − L(t))2 |L(t)=L


(9)
τ →0 τ

where the angles represent an ensemble average of the

II. DYNAMICS OF THE POWER CURVE included functions under the condition of L = L(ui ).
Thus, D(1) and D(2) can be calculated directly from
We focus on the instantaneous power output of a measured data and the deterministic relation as well as
WTGS defined by [6].: the noisy fluctuations can be evaluated [10].

We consider the simplified case of one-dimentional

L(t) = Lf ix (u) + `0 (t) .
We describe the relaxation of L(t) on the stationary
power Lf ix (u) as a simple exponential function of growth
and decay.
`0 (t) ∝ ±e−αt
d of the Langevin-equation vanishes. The deterministic
L(t) = −α`0 (t) + g(Li , t)η(t) .
dt
where −α`0 (t) describes its relaxation of the fluctuations
which is proportional to an exponential function at time
t and g(L, t)η(t) represents the influence of dynamical
noise from the system: e.g. switch-off, pitch and yaw
angle controls, etc. For ilustration see Fig.3.
In order to obtain a ’real’ power curve by means of fix-
points, we assume L(t) to be stationary and a stochastic
variable for wind speeds between: ua ≤ ui < ub with
an evolution in time which can be described by a
Langevin-equation [10–12].:
q  Fig.5. D(2) has a minimum at Lf ix which indicates a
d pronounced stability of the power output.
L(t) = D(1) (L) + D(2) (L) · Γ(t) .
dt
(4) dynamics of the power output only. Using measured
data of 1sec mean values of a small WTGS of 50Watt
[13] we calculate the drift and diffusion coefficients, see
Fig.4a and b. The average of the Langevin-equation
with D(1) (Lf ix ) := 0 was applied in order to obtain
the stable fix-points (dynamical means). The slope of
(5) these fix-points define the stability, thus Lf ix (ui ) of the
power output is found, see Fig.4a. The second term
(6)
dynamics of the power output can also be expressed by
the potential φD (L), defined as δφ δL = −D
D (1)
(L). A
stable fix-point corresponds to the minimum of the drift
potential φD (L), see Fig.5.
In order to get an understanding of the real power
curve dynamics grasped by the drift coefficients, the
additional noise has to be taken into account. In the
Fig.4b the corresponding magnitude of the noise are
expressed by the evaluated diffusion coefficients D (2) (L).
The noise will cause transitions between differents power
output states. For the power curve, the noise will
produce fluctuations around the stable fix-points, see
(7)

FIG. 4: Deterministic and stochastic dynamics of the power
output given by D (1) and D(2) for wind speeds between:
5.16m/s ≤ ui < 5.67m/s.
FIG. 5: The corresponding potential δφD
δL
(1)
= −D (L) for the
deterministic dynamics of the power output. For ilustration,
the fix-point has been represented as a blue ball and the 10min
mean as a red square.
III. AN ADVANCED POWER CURVE
We estimate a new power curve which does not
consist of the averaged power values anymore but is
[1] IEC, Wind Turbine Generator Systems, Part 12: Wind
Turbine Power Performance Testing, IEC 61400-12,
3
given by the fix-points of each wind velocity interval,
see Fig. 6. The results of the numerical calculation
for the deterministic dynamics of the power output are
plotted as one-dimentional vector field. The arrows
represent values determined by the data analysis. Thus,
L [W]
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
u [m/s]
FIG. 6: Deterministic dynamics of the power output states
given by D(1) (L) per intervals of wind speeds. The arrows
represent the relaxations tendencies of the power output. The
blue bold dots indicate the stable fix-points and the red line
is the typical 10min mean values of the power curve.
we observe a clear difference between the fix-points and
the usually 10min mean values. Different relaxation ten-
dencies around the fix-points of the power for different
intervals of wind velocities are observed because of the
dynamical noise from the WTGS.
IV. CONCLUSION
The averaged power output of the WTGS has been
described as function of relaxation and noise. Based on
a Langevin-equation the dynamical mean power output
of each wind velocity interval has been derived.
We propose an new procedure for power curve calibra-
tions because it describes the power curve more properly
and does not depend on the average procedure.
The advanced power curve could be used for different
situations of large WTG on turbulent winds and other
atmospheric parameters.
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