Massimiliano Burlando

Optimization of the Regional Spatial Distribution of Wind Power Plants to Minimize the Variability of Wind Energy Input into Power Supply Systems

Abstract In contrast to conventional power generation, wind energy is not a controllable resource because of its stochastic nature, and the cumulative energy input of several wind power plants into the electric grid may cause undesired fluctuations in the power system. To mitigate this effect, the authors propose a procedure to calculate the optimal allocation of wind power plants over an extended territory to obtain a low temporal variability without penalizing too much the overall wind energy input into the power system. The procedure has been tested over Corsica (France), the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean Basin. The regional power supply system of Corsica could be sensitive to large fluctuations in power generation like wind power swings caused by the wind intermittency. The proposed methodology is based on the analysis of wind measurements from 10 anemometric stations located along the shoreline of the island, where most of the population resides, in a reasonably even distribution. First ...

A web-based GIS platform for the safe management and risk assessment of complex structural and infrastructural systems exposed to wind

Abstract This paper describes an extensive research activity, carried out at the University of Genova, aimed at developing an integrated web-based GIS platform for the safe management and risk assessment of complex port areas exposed to intense wind actions. This activity, carried out through the Projects “Wind and Ports” and “Wind, Ports and Sea”, financed by the European Territorial Cooperation Objective, Cross-border program “Italy–France Maritime 2007–2013”, includes the realization of a wide in situ monitoring network, specific numerical codes for the multi-scale simulation of wind and wave fields, wind and wave forecasting algorithms, and statistical wind climate analyses. All the results obtained are made directly available to the port operators through a web-based GIS platform integrated into a global system for the safe and operational management of the port areas involved in the above projects. In particular, the monitoring and forecasting systems work out operative results in continuous mode. The generality of the implemented platform makes it immediately suitable for applications to any port reality worldwide and, even more, to any complex structural and infrastructural system under wind actions.

Field data analysis and weather scenario of a downburst event in Livorno, Italy on 1 October 2012

AbstractThe Mediterranean is a “hot spot” for the genesis of different types of severe weather events, including potentially damaging wind phenomena like downbursts, whose occurrence and evolution in this geographical region have not been documented in the literature. This paper is part of an interdisciplinary collaboration between atmospheric scientists and wind engineers with the objective of conducting a comprehensive analysis of the field measurements and weather scenarios related to nonsynoptic wind systems in this area. The downburst that struck the Livorno coast of Italy at about 1310 local time 1 October 2012 is investigated as a relevant test case for such severe wind events. The wind velocity records detected by ultrasonic anemometers, part of a monitoring network created for the European “Wind and Ports” and “Wind, Ports and Sea” projects, are analyzed and decomposed in order to inspect the main statistical features of this transient event. The analysis of the meteorological precursors to this ...

Wind Power Forecasting techniques in complex terrain: ANN vs. ANN-CFD hybrid approach

Due to technology developments, renewable energies are becoming competitive against fossil sources and the number of wind farms is growing, which have to be integrated into power grids. Therefore, accurate power forecast is needed and often operators are charged with penalties in case of imbalance. Yet, wind is a stochastic and very local phenomenon, and therefore hard to predict. It has a high variability in space and time and wind power forecast is challenging. Statistical methods, as Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), are often employed for power forecasting, but they have some shortcomings: they require data sets over several years and are not able to capture tails of wind power distributions. In this work a pure ANN power forecast is compared against a hybrid method, based on the combination of ANN and a physical method using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The validation case is a wind farm sited in southern Italy in a very complex terrain, with a wide spread turbine layout.

Monitoring, cataloguing, and weather scenarios of thunderstorm outflows in the northern Mediterranean

High sampling rate (10 Hz) anemometric measurements of the “Wind, Ports, and Sea” monitoring network in the northern Tyrrhenian Sea have been analysed to extract the thunderstorm-related signals and catalogue them into three families according to the different time-scale of each event, subdivided among 10 min, 1, and 10 h events. Their characteristics in terms of direction of motion and seasonality/daily occurrence have been analysed: the results showed that most of the selected events come from the sea and occur from 12:00 to 00:00 UTC during the winter season. In terms of peak wind speed, the strongest events all belonged to the 10 min family, but no systematic correlation was found between event duration and peaks. Three events, each one representative of the corresponding class of duration, have been analysed from the meteorological point of view, in order to investigate their physical nature. According to this analysis, which was mainly based on satellite images, meteorological fields obtained from GFS analyses related to convection in the atmosphere, and lightning activity, the thunderstorm-related nature of the 10 min and 1 h events was confirmed. The 10 h event turned out to be a synoptic event, related to extra-tropical cyclone activity.