Advances in Wind Plant Controls: Strategies, Implementation, and Validation

The development of control and operational strategies for wind plants as a system has generated a great deal of interest in recent years as a means of mitigating wake losses, elevating power production, and optimizing plant operations. Given that the fundamental function of wind turbines and wind plants relies on aerodynamic interaction of machines with the dynamic atmospheric resource, wind turbine wake modeling has played a key role in the development of new control strategies. As plant-level control strategies have matured, research efforts have transitioned toward field demonstrations and validation, and in doing so have attracted a great deal of attention from wind plant owner/operators. This special issue in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy will focus on advances in wind plant control theory, application, and validation.

Guest Editors: Nicholas Hamilton, Dennice Gayme, and Raul Cal