Performance losses due to ice accretion for a 5 MW wind turbine

A numerical study of power performance losses due to ice accretion on a large horizontal axis wind turbine blade has been carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and blade element momentum (BEM) calculations for rime ice conditions. The computed aerodynamic coefficients for the normal and iced blades from the CFD calculations were used together with the BEM method to calculate the torque, power and curves of the wind turbine for both normal and icing conditions. The results are compared with the published data. It is shown that icing results in a reduced power production from the turbine and that changing the turbine controller could improve the power production with iced blades.