WAsP 7.3 known issues

This list of known issues relates to the newest version of the WAsP 7.3 program only.

The issues

• Description: Help facility does not close with application if opened from main menu
  Users affected: All users
  Details: If you open the help facility from the WAsP 7.3 main menu, then when the application is closed, the help facility remains open. This behavior is different from that of a help window opened using the F1 key.
  Workaround: Close the window manually.
  Fixes: Not corrected.
• Description: DLL conflict with TurboCAD version 5.x.
  Users affected: Users who have TurboCAD installed.
  Details: TurboCAD apparently requires an old version of a DLL file called Msvcrt.Dll. Specifically, it seems to require version 4 of this DLL. The WAsP 7.3 installation upgrades this DLL to version 6, which apparently breaks the TurboCAD installation.
  Workaround: None. Need to choose whether to have TurboCAD or WAsP 7.3 running. To use TurboCAD, you must manually replace version 4.0 of the Msvcrt.dll file. Simply re-installing TurboCAD on top of the WAsP 7.3 install will not get it working again.
  Fixes: Contact TurboCAD technical support if you need to run both TurboCAD and WAsP 7.3 on the same computer.

• Description: The licence manager loses its validity in connection with some change in secondary hardware configuration or set-up.
  Users affected: Users using the licence manager (a) shipped with the Jan. 2000 version of the installation CD-ROM; or (b) downloaded from the licence procedure page before July 10th 2000.
  Details: The licence becomes invalid after (a) change in network-card set-up, change of network-ID or connection to network backup server; or (b) configuration change in another extra device.
  Fixes: Make sure you actually have WAsP 7.3 installed . However, change in primary hardware configuration (e.g. hard disk change) will normally require the  licence procedure to be performed again.

• Description: Non-standard air densities cannot be explicitly treated.
  Users affected: All.
  Details: No possibility to specify the air density for a single turbine or for a wind farm.
  Workaround: Obtain from the turbine manufacturer a power curve for the power turbine optimised for the actual average air density, and use that instead of the standard density power curve.  
  Fixes: Wind turbine power curves containing multiple air density information will be introduced in a later version.

• Description: Discrepancies between (A) wind farm annual energy production for all sectors; and (B) the sum of the sectorial contributions
  Users affected: All.
  Details:  The all-sector annual energy production is based on the all-sector Weibull distribution (A). In general this all-sector production number may deviate from the sum of the (12) sectorial contributions  based on the sectorial Weibull distributions (B).
  Workaround: Check in the OWC-view (Observed Wind Climate) how well each of the directional histograms and the all-direction histogram is represented by the corresponding Weibull distribution. If the directional representations are good but the all-direction representation is poor, you have probably found the cause of your problem, as the two ways to calculate the power production – A and B – may then differ. In some cases this may be due to different seasonal wind climates with different prevailing wind direction and rather different wind speed statistics. In that case, in stead of creating a single OWC, create two or more seasonal OWCs,  where each has more equal Weibull distributions in the directional sectors. The entire wind resource analysis should then be performed for each of the OWC sub-statistics.
  Fixes: Optional selection of the all-sector wind turbine power output to be calculated as the sum of contributions from the sectors as an alternative to calculating it from the all-sector Weibull distribution will be introduced in an update in the near future.

• Description: Minor differences in calculated wake-effect loss between  WAsP 7.3 and the old Park (DOS) program.
  Users affected: All.
  Details: For large wind farm, where the wake from some turbine may strike the ground before hitting another (downwind) turbine, WAsP7.3 may estimate slightly (typically 1%) higher wake effect power loss for the entire wind farm. The reason is an improved calculation scheme in WAsP7 to ensure that all turbine-to-turbine wake interactions are taken correctly into account.
  Fixes: No fixes are necessary – WAsP7.3 is right!

• Description: Breakdown of wind atlas and wind climate calculations in connection with very detailed digital maps.
  Users affected: All.
  Details: When using very large and/or very detailed digital maps, the calculation of a wind atlas, and of wind climates (in connection with single turbines, wind farms and resource grids) may break down. The reason is the limited computer memory reserved for handling terrain details around a calculation point. 
  Workaround:  Try one or more of the following suggestions: a) Reduce the size of the map (use the map editor clip-option), but retaining at least 8x8 km around a calculation point; b) reduce the project parameter "Max. Interpolation Radius in BZ-Model" (default 20 km, min. 5 km ); c) decrease the height resolution in the outer part of the map (e.g. retaining only the 10 m or 25 m contours), keeping  high resolution only in the inner 2x2 km. 
  Fixes: Will be fixed in a later update.

• Description: Breakdown of wind resource calculations when the wind statistics has zero sectorial frequency in one or more sectors.
  Users affected: All.
  Details: When evaluating wind resources (single wind turbines, wind farms, resource grids) in connection with regional wind climates with zero sectorial frequency in one or more sectors the calculation may break down with an irrecoverable Math-error error message.
  Workaround: The problem may be by-passed by recalculating the regional wind climate (wind atlas) using a slightly adjusted observed wind climate file (OWC, *.tab).  The OWC-file should be adjusted in an ASCII editor, making sure that a) each sector has a non-zero sector percentage frequency (may be small, but > 0, e.g. 0.2 ), and that b) each sector has at least one velocity-bin in the histogram with a non-zero frequency. E.g. if a sector has purely zeroes in the histogram, change the  "0" in the first velocity bin to a "1".
  Fixes: Will be fixed in a later update.

• Description: OWC-Wizard: Inaccurate treatment of wind direction discretisation on sector boundaries.
  Users affected: All.
  Details: Wind directions on the sector boundaries are not distributed properly between the involved sectors, the event is only registered in the lower sector. Normally the effect will be hardly visible.
  Fixes: Is fixed in the latest OWC-generator module.

• Description: Map Editor: Break-down of lengthy digitization operations.
  Users affected: All.
  Details: When performing lengthy on-screen digitizations of height contours/roughness lines on top of a background bit-mapped map-image, the process may sometimes lock up, leaving the map display window empty, and also sometimes affecting the functioning of the operating system. The cause seems to be limited assigned graphical memory in the WINDOWS operating system.
  Workaround: The problem may be avoided by – at suitably regular intervals – saving the map digitized so far  followed by closing down and restarting the map editor, and then continuing the digitization process. 
  Fixes: Will be fixed in later version of the map editor by using an alternative graphical drawing technique.

• Description: WAsP under WINDOWS2000: Installation restricted to the installing user  (administrator).
  Users affected: Users, with an account on the computer, who have not installed WAsP, nor installed the WAsP licence information under their own user account.
  Details: When logging in on the computer, using a user-code, under which WAsP was not installed, WAsP seems uninstalled.  
  Workaround: Reinstall WAsP under the user-accounts of all users who are going to use WAsP on the computer in question, and re-install the WAsP licence information as well (the same WAsP user-code and unlock code may be used for all users). This reinstallation may require that these users – temporarily –  have their access rights raised to at least "Power User" or may be even "Administrator".
  Fixes: In a later installation  – at least with WAsP8 – a WAsP installation performed by a user with administrator rights will be valid for all users. If installed by a user with "Power user" rights, the WAsP installation will only be valid for that user.