Morten

Hi Aitor, Comspec and Windsimu are two programs made prior to the Turbulence Simulator. Their use are described in two PDFs normally shiped with the software (not really part of WAsP Engineering). I can mail them you if you write to our user support system. They do not attempt to simulate a coherent gust, but the simulated turbulence has realistic coherence. Best regards, Morten Nielsen

Hi Erkan, The WAsP Map Editor offers several possibilities. 1. You may by press ‘Edit| Clip Map| Map part’, define a rectangular or elliptical boundary, and then decide to keep either the map part inside or outside the boundary. 2. When you combine two maps you can either use the ‘File| Add’ or ‘File| Add and Replace’ methods. If you chose 'Add and Replace' the contours from an already loaded map will be deleted in the area covered by the new map. This is a good way to avoid crossing contours from two maps, e.g. maps with coarse and fine resolution. 3. It is sometimes practical to remove all contours of a certain type. This is done by pressing ‘Edit| Clip Map| Contour/line Attributes’ and then select from the emerging popup menu. This way you could for instance remove all height contours from a map before you replace them with height contours from a better map and avoid losing your roughness contours. Find more information the the Map Editor helpfile. Regards, Morten

Hi Nicolas, I just made an answer on the support help desk to someone who might be a colleague of yours. Anyway, the question is fairly general, so I see no confidentially problem in repeating the answer here. It goes like this... "If your goal is to see the AEP of a reduced windfarm layout containing only every second turbine of the turbines in your present project, then the easiest way is to split the turbine group into two groups. You can then temporarily drag the turbines you don't want to include in the calculation outside the WAsP project, to the root level of the workspace object hierarchy, and repeat the calculations for the reduced wind farm. When you want to see the AEP of all the turbines you drag the turbine group back into the project. Maybe this is not exactly what you need. Wind-farm operators sometimes use a strategy where some turbines are shut-down for certain wind directions to avoid excessive wake loads from neighboring turbines. This strategy is often referred to as sector management. Unfortunately, it is not yet supported in WAsP. We do however have a Windfarm Assessment Tool (WAT) which can make this calculation in an approximate way. You can read about this at http://www.wasp.dk/Software/WAT. You need WAsP Engineering to generate input to WAT, as one of its main features is to do IEC site assessment (extreme winds, turbulence, shear and flow inclination angles)." Best regards, Morten

First you export your data as an ASCII file and import these into the WAsP Climate Analyst wher you create a Observed Mean Wind Climate (OMWC) and store this on file. Now go to WAsP, create a generalized wind climate, specify the met mast position and provide access to the OMWC file. You need a map for the terrain data in your WAsP project even if it is totally flat with uniform surface roughness. You can create such maps with the WAsP Map Editor. After these preparations you will be able to insert turbine sites in the WAsP project and predict the wind climates for these. I recommend that you read the 'step-by-step example' in the 'guided tour' section of the WAsP help file. We also have WAsP training courses.

WAT imports the mean wind climates of WAsP. I will only make short comment here and refer to the WAsP help file, similar questions in the WAsP section of this forum, and the European Wind Atlas for detailed information. A1 WAsP fits the PDFs by matching two statistics of the observations with the Weibull probablity distribution. These statistics are the average cube of the wind speed and the probability of winds above the empirical mean wind speed. This usually gives a good fit in the upper part of the wind distributions which is most important for the power production. NB: The mean wind speed of the Weibull fit will not match the data perfectly. A2 The extrapolation is done with the WAsP model. There is no simple formula. A3 Please read about roughness classification in the help file of WAsP, the help file of the WAsP Map Editor and the European Wind Atlas. Cheers, Morten

Hi GianLuca, Nice work! I am already speculating whether our university students could do similar sensitivity studies by scripts, e.g. as part of their master theses. Cheers, Morten

Hi Gianluca, Good to hear that you are making progress. I don't know enough to help you with the new problem, but one of the expert has promised to post a hint. Best regards, Morten

Hi Gianluca, This must be one of the parameters sometimes displayed in the 'generalized wind climate report' if it differs from its default value. So I opened 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Wasp\Internal scripts\WAsP\WAsP 11 standard scripts.zip' and extracted the file called 'Generalised wind climate report (HTML).was9'. The section starting at line 92 of that file has a code for displaying non-default model parameters. Here you see objects called Set Configuration = Project.AsIRveaConfigurable.Configuration Set Parameter = Configuration.ParameterByIndex(ParameterIndex) and the parameter object has a description, value, and default value. I am guessing that ParameterIndex refers to the numbers listed in the WAsP help file section 'Technical reference| WAsP Parameters| WAsP Parameters'. I am not sure whether these parameters only have read-only access from a script, but maybe you can test that for yourself. Actually, I am not much of a WAsP scripter, but I will watch this post and alert the programmers if you ask for help. With best regards, Morten

Hi Paula, Method 2 is used,i.e. WAsP obtains a histogram for each combination of roughness class and standard height. The shape parameter will normally change with height for non-neutral atmospheric stability, but if you set all heat fluxes to zero it should be the same at all heights when the surface roughness is constant. There is some pages in the EWA (which I dont have at hand at the moment) explaining the stability corrections. However, I have been told that the exact method has been revised, so you will not be able to reconstruct this just by looking in the EWA. Best regards, Morten

Hi Puala, There is something I got wrong, something I did not explain well, and something I haven’t mentioned yet. Let us start with my misunderstanding. I told you that WAsP starts by converting histograms to Weibull distributions and then work entirely with these. I now talked to Ib Troen who designed the algorithms (and wrote much of the European Wind Atlas). He explained that histograms of observed data actually are converted to histograms for the wind atlas roughness classes before fitting Weibull distributions. The geostrophic drag law is applied using individual wind speeds with different surface roughness in different directions, as I think you suspected. The fitting is done by the method matching the 3rd statistical moment and the probability of exceeding the observed mean wind. Later on WAsP will interpolate in the standard cases and then use the two-moment method. The thing I did not explain well was the conversion of 3rd statistical moment and the probability of exceeding the observed mean wind. What I meant was that these statistics of the fitted Weibull distribution matches similar statistics of the observations. All wind-speed statistics will, however, change with height. Finally I should say that there are things regarding the conversion of TAB files to LIB files, which we have not yet discussed. WAsP will correct the observed wind climate for orographic speed-up and veer (with the IBZ flow model), roughness changes (IBL model for internal boundary layers), obstacle shelter (Perera model) and the surface roughness in the geostrophic drag law will differ for each sector. You can see a table of these parameters if you right click a site in WAsP and select ‘show| site corrections’. Furthermore, the stability correction of the unperturbed wind profile will depend on heat-flux statistics specified in the project options, and by default these will differ for land and offshore surfaces. It is a little bit complicated and I must admit that I once gave up implementing these corrections in an independent program. Cheers, Morten

Hi Paula, WAsP calculates the mean wind speed for new heights by the new Weibull distribution. There is a formula stating that a moment of order n can be calculated by Mn=A^n*Gamma[1+n/k]. When WAsP needs new wind-speed frequencies for AEP calculations, these also calculated by the Weibull distribution using p(u1

Hi Paula, There will be a shift of wind-speed probability and it could be calculated by shifting probabilities in wind-speed bins, just like you suggest. However, the WAsP method is to first calculate sector-wise Weibull distributions for the height of interest, and then calculate the frequency of occurrence in wind speed bins by the Weibull distributions. Cheers, Morten

The WAsP helpfile has a section called 'Accuracy and detail of the map' which contains this explanation: "The roughness classification should preferably extend to max(100×h, 10 km) from any site likely to be investigated; where h is the height of interest above the ground. If extensive water surfaces occur in the area, it may even be extended to 15 km (150 h) or more. Topographical maps on scales of 1:25,000 or 1:50,000 are well suited for roughness length classification and preparation of the roughness map. The roughness-change line descriptions close to the prospected site(s) should be as detailed and accurate as possible. Conversely, both the detail and accuracy may be relaxed somewhat far away from the site(s)." For the distant part of the map I could add that large areas are more important than small ones, and areas with significantly different roughness (water, forest) are more important than areas with a slight variation form the average. WAsP simplifies your detailed roughness map to a roughness rose for each point of calculation. This roughness rose is divided into the usual number of sectors and each sector has a relatively small number of roughness zones, which are used in the roughness change model. The default maximum number of zones is 10. The roughness in these zones are area-weighted averages based on your detailed map, so a small distant patch makes little difference. There is more explanation of this roughness map simplification in the European Wind Atlas.

Hi Paula, The answer to your first question is no. The generalized winds are defined for flat terrain, so there is no terrain-induced wind veer. The veer related to the Ekman spiral is not included either, perhaps because we do not assumed a specific value for the boundary layer height. Regarding the second question, then the basic fitting of Weibull distributions to histograms is actually done by a method conserving 1) the third moment and 2) the probability of winds beyond the observed mean wind. This often distorts the mean wind slightly, but it gives a better fit of wind speed probabilities in the range of turbine operation. As for the wind-veer correction, then WAsP first applies the Weibull distributions to calculates two moments for each sector, I think the first and third one. These moments are redistributed among sectors in accordance with the wind veer. Finally, the new Weibull parameters are calculated by the veer-corrected moments. Cheers, Morten

There is no default folder for the WAsP Workspaces (called *.wwh files not *.wmh). You select the folder the first time you press 'file| save' from WAsP or whenever you press 'file| save as'.

The *.wwh file is really a *.zip file and the most important file inside this is called 'inventory.xml'. This XML file contains the project structure and the exception report is telling us that WAsP has trouble extracting this. You could try to rename a copy of you *.wwh file to *.zip file and check whether it is corrupted. You might even be able to repair the ZIP file if it only has a minor problem and then rename it to a WWH file. Good luck, Morten

Hi Paula, I think it would be most accurate to use time series as you suggest. However, WAsP only has access to the observed mean wind climate (*tab; *.owc; *.omwc). This file is produced by a independent program, usually the WAsP climate analyst, and it provides statistics in sectors and wind-speed bins only. The directional corrections for different surface roughness in the Wind Atlas File (*.lib) are done inside WAsP. This redistributes of the sector frequencies in the wind rose depending on the wind veer angle. Cheers, Morten

Sorry, I never paid attention to that statement before. I think it is a bit vague, as we don't know the criteria for positive validation or definitions of terrain types. My only suggestion is to test model performance with data from previous site calibration test at sites with similar terrain and wind climate. You probably have to do this yourself as people are reluctant to share such data.

Annex B of the IEC 61400-12 standard prescribes tests of the terrain around the tested turbine, and states that you can use a flow model as a substitute for site-calibration measurements when the terrain-testing criteria are only violated by 50%. When the terrain is OK you neither need site-calibration nor flow modelling. CFD models like WAsP-CFD are expected to be more accurate than linear flow models inside WAsP and WAsP Engineering. The standard has no flow model requirements, so presumably the linear models are considered adequate for the purpose. I don't know of any published work on the topic.

Hi Paula, If you look at the geostrophic drag law in equation (8.5) on p. 567 of the European Wind Atlas, you will see that a given combination of geostrophic wind G and surface roughness z0 determines the friction velocity u*. This fixes the u*/G ratio and thereby determines the angle between surface wind and geostrophic wind. If you consider the same geostrophic wind but a new surface roughness z0, you will get a new friction velocity u* and wind-veer angle alpha. The distributions for different conditions in the WAsP wind atlas file (*.lib) corresponds to the same distribution of Geostrophic winds, but frequency distributions for different surface roughness will differ because of the different wind-veer angles alpha, i.e. they have different rotations relative to the directional distribution of Geostrophic winds. The height-dependence of wind-speed distributions is determined by logarithmic wind profiles for the different values of the surface roughness. Best regards, Morten

Hi Burak, The Windfarm Assessment Tool can model effects of sector management in a crude way. You can download a PDF file presenting WAT if you clik on the link half way down on the page at www.wasp.dk/Products-og-services/WAT. Cheers, Morten

Selim posted a similar question at WAsP support, and I answered something like this: Standard roughness lengths are used in the WAsP wind atlas, which contains wind climates for idealized flat terrain and uniform surface roughness. The wind atlas stores several of these solutions for a range of standard heights and standard surface roughness classes. Wind atlas data are used for interpolation, so you should not delete too many standard roughness values, e.g. you should keep a class with z0=0 if you want to model any water surface in your project domain. You can, however, gain extra accuracy by adding the turbine height to the collection of standard heights and thereby avoid interpolation. The roughness for particular areas, like a forest, are specified in the roughness map, not in the wind atlas. You can download a note on WAsP modeling of forested sites from http://www.wasp.dk/Support/FAQ#forest Regards, Morten

Hi all, It seems like the preparation and import of observed turbulence statistics in WAT 3.0 is not as easy as it ought to be, but it will be improved in the next version. There will also be an alternative method which allows you to generating these statistics from time series. Glad to read that JonLdM found a solution. Ycon, please send a mail to wengsupport@dtu.dk including a sample TI statistics file and your WEng license number. Best regards, Morten

Hi Malik, When selecting the 'launch in WAT' option, the 'prepare data for WAT' tool tries to extract a terrain map including all selected sites with a margin of 25 hub heights. Your error messages indicates that your project domain is too small for that operation. You can read more about this and related topics at http://www.wasp.dk/Support/FAQ/WengMaps.aspx Best regards, Morten

Hi Malik, The basic input for WEng is called an observed extreme wind file (*.oewc) and it is generated with the WAsP Climate analyst. You could say that WEng *.oewc files are equivalent to the WAsP *.tab or *.owc files. In WEng projects you can convert your observed extreme wind files (*.oewc) to generate generalized extreme wind climate files (*.rewc), save these to disk, and use them in other WEng projects. Thus, the WEng *.rewc files are equivalent to WAsP *.lib or *.rwc wind atlas files. NB: Please use WACA for WEng2 or WACA2 for WEng3 as the observed extreme-wind file format has changed. Cheers, Morten