Integration and development of software (Part 4 – WP 4)

The objective of the work package is to integrate existing design tools for offshore wind farms in order to develop the integral offshore cluster design tool. The existing models to be integrated describe wakes, wind farm effects, large scale wind farm impacts, electrical infrastructure, the atmospheric boundary layer and other issues.

The objectives are:

  • Definition of the user-requirements for the software
  • Definition of the data and control interfaces to facilitate the coupling of existing models available with the EERA institutes
  • Design of the DTOC software
  • Development of the software to couple existing models at the various institutes to create integrated offshore wind farm design tool

The R&D activities are divided into several tasks:

WP4.1 - Requirements

  • User requirements - In order to determine the end-user requirements for the offshore cluster tool, a workshop will be organized, where a requirement questionnaire will be used. As result, the collected and discussed requirements will be documented in a report, accompanied by an estimation of the importance of different requirements.
  • Software and interface requirements - The software and interface requirements have two main input paths: the user requirements and the user stories, and the interface and operation descriptions of the different existing tools. The interface requirements include the description of used and desired file formats, in particular for single point time series data, gridded data, topographical information, and the static description of farms, model parameters and grid connection layout.
  • Conceptual model coupling - Based on the user stories/requirements and the available models, an analysis of scope will be done; trying to match the user expectations with the possibilities of the models existing in the consortium.

WP4.2 - Software design

  • Pre-design - In order to optimize the development process, in a first step a preliminary design and proof-of-concept software will be developed.
  • Main design - On the base of the above-mentioned analysis, the main software tool design will be developed and discussed. The design will include: data interfaces, call and control of sub-models, data flow, and result presentation.

WP4.3 - DTOC Implementation

  • The prototype will be the minimum implementation of the design and interfaces defined in the two previous tasks. It will allow project partners to check the validity of the design, and will allow modellers to have a test bed for their own software, to be able to make it compatible with the identified interfaces.
  • Release candidate and final DTOC software - The release candidate (version 0.5) of the DTOC tool will be implemented following this final detail design. This version will be tested in detail by the developing partners and selected end-users in WP5.

 

Outcome is a report on the user requirements from the EERA-DTOC workshop held on the 16th of April 2012 during the EWEA 2012 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

 

Work package partners: