Detection of Wake Impingement in Support of Wind Plant Control

This paper describes a methodology to detect on a wind turbine wake impingement by an upstream machine. The detection is based on the use of rotor loads. As rotor load sensors are becoming routinely available on modern wind turbines, for example to enable individual blade pitch control, no additional sensors or equipment is necessary for the implementation of the present method. The new wake detector is used for driving wake deflection strategies by active wind turbine yaw.