The single biggest challenge to studying system-level wind turbine behaviour is the stochastic nature of its natural driving force - the wind. Wind profiles corresponding to many of the design load cases are generally rare events, and if you are lucky enough to experience one in the field with a prototype turbine, you'll never see one just like it again. So, engineers build testbenches to allow them to apply full-scale loads to wind turbine components controllably and repeatedly. Wind energy conversion systems have grown in size through their commercialisation and use in utility scale power production. But as size increases, so too must wind turbine testbenches, which have become larger and more complex than ever before, becoming impressive dynamic systems in their own right.
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