IEA Wind Task 19: Wind Energy in Cold Climates (working period 2019 - 2021)

Depending on the climate at a site, there are numerous days during the year with weather conditions that lead to icing. About 15 % of current wind turbine sites in Austria can be classified as so-called 'Cold Climate' locations with frequent icing. At these locations, icing represents a major challenge, both during the planning phase and later-on during operation of the turbines.

However even in regions in the Eastern part of Austria, where a majority of the Austrian wind turbines are located, icing events occur several times per year. These icing events have to be taken into account, particularly regarding security and risk aspects.

Task 19 of the IEA Wind has been dealing with the manifold challenges of wind power in icing conditions for more than 15 years. The primary aim of this international research cooperation is to collect and generate new knowledge through mutual exchange of experience and global networking. This is achieved through biannual task workshops, where national research projects are presented and discussed. The results of the collaboration will be published in form of guidelines with best practice examples and recommendations for the realization of wind energy projects at sites with icing conditions. These documents contain recommendations for internationally valid definitions and classification systems and serve as inputs for norms and standards.

In the course of this current project Energiewerkstatt will (beside the tasks of networking and dissemination activities) work on the two following research topics:

On the one hand, Energiewerkstatt will continue leading a subtask, which deals with the assessment of icefall/ice-throw risk. As a result, the official recommendation of Task 19 will be updated and complemented with relevant aspects regarding the major input parameters for the assessment of risk due to icefall/ice-throw. Furthermore, Energiewerkstatt will work with data sets (of for wind energy relevant locations) on a transfer-function for converting the icing frequency and duration on an unheated first class cup anemometer to an unheated wind turbine.

In order to ensure a smooth knowledge transfer of international expertise to Austria, Energiewerkstatt serves as a national interface for the IEA activities. In co-operation with IGW, international know-how will be disseminated in Austria.

Documentation: Winterwind conference

For many years, the „Winterwind" conference is an annual fix point on the topic of wind energy in cold climate zones. This year, because of COVID19-related restrictions, "Winterwind 2021" had to be organized in a pure online format. Alexander Stökl from Energiewerkstatt contributed to this year's Winterwind with a talk reporting on Austrian research activities on ice fall from wind turbines, which have been conducted in the framework of the IEA-Wind task 19 collaboration.

The presentation slides are available for download.

Publications are available in the previous working period on the German part of the website.

Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland

Project leader:

DI Andreas Krenn, MBA
Energiewerkstatt,
Heiligenstatt 24
A-5211 Friedburg