Wind energy

Wind energy

In the last decades, the wind energy technology has been steady growing following a continuous trend aimed at minimizing the energy cost. In recent years, several industrial and public projects have been funded to improve the understanding of the  physics at the base of the wind energy conversion process for a single wind turbine as well as for wind farms. Within these projects, wind tunnel testing plays an important role, synergetic with numerical simulations and full-scale filed tests. 

Thanks to the long-term in-house expertise in designing and building high-fidelity and target-oriented wind turbine scale models, GVPM has been carrying out a wide variety of wind tunnel tests characterized by the most diverse goals, from the optimization of the aerodynamic performance of a single machine to the analysis of the wake interaction for offshore wind farms.

The design of experiments, test themselves and the interpretation of gathered data have been supported by internationally recognized research projects, making GVPM an effective scientific reference for any kind of wind energy-related experiment. 

GVPM offers the following capabilities, regarding both the atmospheric boundary layer as well as low-turbulence test sections:

  • Design of wind turbine scaled models
  • Blade airfoil aerodynamics
  • Wind turbine aerodynamics and aeroelasticity
  • Control of wind turbines and related technology (such as wind/wake observers)
  • Wind farm assessment and control
  • Performance assessment in specific wind sites (e.g. reproducing orography and turbulence/boundary layer flow)
  • Floating offshore wind turbine tests
  • Advanced Hardware in the Loop (HIL) simulations for offshore wind turbine tests