IceWind

Wind turbines in a cold climate surrounded by ice

The project objectives address cold climate aspects and will include the production of icing atlas for Sweden and Iceland based on long term meteorological statistics.

A main issue is the development and validation of short-term forecast of icing by use of numerical weather prediction models and different cloud and hydrometeor-parameterization schemes and include offshore sea spray icing. The final objective is development of an engineering tool for production loss calculation of large wind turbine installations in northern latitudes.

The project objectives related to offshore wind include resource mapping near Iceland and improved land-wind resource map such that the following objectives can be achieved: Full-scale studies on the integration of hydro and wind power in Iceland. The objectives are to identify and enumerate several potential future location scenarios for wind farms and identify location specific cost - benefit measures regarding investment and operations cost with timing and expansion assumptions for these scenarios. Furthermore, to estimate wind energy production when integrated with other resources and to identify transmission capacity restrictions and transmission loss measures for the range of locations and finally to design a market driven short term simulation system using optimization models.

Large-scale integration of wind power objectives include improved forecasting for 1) each wind farm, 2) the entire grid on energy production data and wake loss, 3) icing loss, and 4) offshore operation and cost effective maintenance, tools for optimising the choice of vessel types in different wave climates and providing specialized forecasts for accessibility will be addressed. The site conditions and forecasting results will be combined in analysis of the implications to the power system in the Nordic countries assuming increased amount of cold climate and offshore wind farms.

The objectives of the ICEWIND project aim to support the European targets for the high amount of renewable integration of the power systems in 2020, with the inevitable move towards offshore waters. The project outcomes are expected to be relevant for other cold climate areas of the world.

The project is supported financially by the Nordic Top-level Research Initiative and the Nordic wind energy industry.