Estimating extreme gusts for wind turbine loads in tropical storms

Tropical storms have the potential to generate damaging extreme winds at wind farms along and near their direct path. Estimating the survivability of turbine classes at locations subject to extreme tropical weather is important for the sustainability of proposed wind farms in these locations. Ground observations of hub-height winds in tropical storm-prone areas have generally not been in place long enough to capture a sufficient sample of tropical storm events. Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models can be used to run multi-decadal retrospective studies, but lack the resolution to estimate historical extreme winds with skill. To address the deficiencies of these approaches, we will explore the suitability of using historical typhoon and tropical storm data available from the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTraCS) dataset to estimate extreme winds for various locations affected by tropical storms. These data will be utilized in a model that accounts for the horizontal extent of tropical force storm winds, the spatial characteristics of the wind field, and vertical wind shear. These results will be related to failure wind speeds of International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Class I, II, and III wind turbines, represented as 3-second gusts with a 50-year return period to estimate the risk associated with each turbine class at a particular location.