search

NREL / SAM

System Advisor Model (SAM)
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
337 stars 140 forks source link

Wind turbine doesn't generate power at wind speeds above cut-in speed #1756

Closed cpaulgilman closed 5 months ago

cpaulgilman commented 5 months ago

Describe the bug

See https://sam.nrel.gov/forum/forum-general/4579-sam-only-begins-to-show-output-at-wind-speeds-above-14m-s.html for description and files

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

  1. Download custom 5-min weather file from forum topic: https://sam.nrel.gov/forum/attachment/1935?download=1
  2. Create a default Wind Power case (with or without financial model).
  3. On Wind Turbine page, change Hub height to 140 m.
  4. On the Wind Resource page, check Use a wind resource file stored on your computer and click Browse to select file you downloaded in Step 1.
  5. Click Simulate.
  6. On the Results page, to to Data Tables and add "Wind speed (m/s)" to the table. Note that turbine generates power at 15 m/s and above despite power curve of GE 2.5xl turbine showing cut-in speed of 4 m/s.

Expected behavior

Wind turbine shoud start generating power at turbine cut-in speed.

Operating System and Version

SAM 2023.12.17 r1 for Windows

cpaulgilman commented 5 months ago

This issue is caused by air pressure data in the wrong units: "air pressure at 100m (Pa)" column contains values in the range of 995, but should be 99,500. Changing the data in the weather file solves the problem.

This could be addressed by adding a check in the wind resource file reader for ranges of valid values and reporting error messages when data is out of range.