A comprehensive review of operational analysis of wind turbines

The output power of a wind turbine significantly changes with continuously variation of wind speed. Because of this variation nature of wind speed, every wind turbine demonstrates a unique performance and delivers a unique power. This paper presents the results of a study conducted to estimate and compare a series of medium size wind turbines (2-3 MW) from their operational point of view. For the purpose of full operation analysis in this study, 8 commercially available wind turbines of similar sizes (in terms of their rated power in MW) have been chosen. For comparison analysis wind speed characteristics, and power curve of these wind turbines were used. To reach its objectives, this paper is divided to two parts. In the first part the Weibull distribution function was applied to analyse the wind speed characteristics and used to calculate the wind power operation capacity. In the second part, for the same purpose, the cumulative distribution function was applied. The study results show that wind speed characteristic of the site, where the wind turbines are installed, and the three important wind speeds of each wind turbine such as cut-in, rated, and cutoff wind speeds as well as gap between these three wind speeds have significant effects on operation of wind turbines.