This November, graduate students from UTD Wind presented at the 17th annual PhD Seminar hosted by the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto and the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE). The three-day conference took place in Porto, Portugal and it allowed PhD researchers the opportunity to share their work among their peers as a way to get involved with an international community in wind energy.
The program featured sessions, posters, and networking events with students and industry leaders. One session, led by UTD Wind student Devesh Kumar, presented a strategy to maximize a wind turbine’s power output during periods of low wind speed. The algorithm he is developing continuously monitors the energy generated and control systems to make adjustments to the wind speed in real-time. His results show the new algorithm is an improvement over conventional designs by interpreting the data faster to make adjustments quickly as the wind conditions change.
“I enjoyed attending all the sessions, but mostly I have controls background, so control sessions were quite engaging and interactive,” Kumar stated. He continued, “it felt great to learn more about so many different works in wind energy.”
This year the conference returned to in-person format after going virtual the previous year. The students appreciated the human interaction and meeting with other researchers. The seminar afforded ample time during coffee breaks and lunches for the students to gain new perspectives from their peers.
Federico Bernardoni, McDermott Graduate Fellow for UTD Wind, said, “it was also remarkable the networking possibility after each session that gave me time to have insightful discussions with the other PhD students from many different Universities.” The conference was packed with presentations. Bernardoni remarked it was, “hard to choose the most engaging sessions. I found particularly interesting the sessions about wind farm control and modeling and the sessions about offshore wind.”
Bernardoni presented the results of his recent research that identified clusters of turbines that could be independently optimized. His work tackles the complexity of wind farm control strategies by considering intentional turbine misalignments in a field to maximize power. Traditional wind farm controls focus on power production but are not always optimized at this granular level.
Wind energy research is a multidisciplinary effort. Events like the EAWE PhD Seminar allow students to forge connections and encourage collaborations in fields outside their concentrations. “The complexity of wind energy requires collaboration between experts of many different fields,” finished Bernardoni. The future of wind energy is fortunate to have passionate individuals tackling these challenges with innovation and creativity.
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