Every January, the Wind Energy Department at DTU carry out a 3-week course in wind farm planning and development. The course covers all aspects of wind farm development, including wind resource and energy yield assessments, wind farm design, environmental impact assessment, grid connection, wind farm economics – as well as market, policy, support mechanisms and public acceptance issues.
During the course, teams of 3-4 students carry out different sample wind farm projects, in which WAsP is used for the wind resource and energy yield assessments. The projects are located all over the world – both on land and offshore – in places where DTU has access to wind measurements. For the flow modelling of the wind farm area, the students produce elevation maps based on space shuttle elevation data, and land cover maps from satellite imagery.
Another WAsP tool – WAsP Engineering – is further used for estimation of the extreme wind climate and turbulence intensity in the wind farm – which determines the choice of wind turbine generator. If the wind farm is offshore, the students can also employ the Fuga wake model for estimation of the wind farm wake losses; if the wind farm is in complex terrain, it may be investigated using WAsP-CFD.
The wind farm planning and development course run once a year at DTU and students come from all over the world; there are typically more than 20 different nationalities on each course.