Proceedings of Renewable Energy 2030 - Expert's Visions, Oldenburg, Germany October 1, 2012
Authors: G. Pechlivanoglou

Wind turbines are being constantly developed with a rapid increase in size and capacity. The continuous upscaling however leads to significant design, manufacturing, transportation and operation challenges. Someof the largest and most heavily loaded components of wind turbines such as the blades are at the limits of their material and design properties. Current large wind turbine blades, bearings and other heavily loaded components suffer from extreme and fatigue loads. Meanwhile wind turbine control systems have reached a limited range of load and power management, therefore new concepts need to be developed. Active flow control (AFC) solutions are consequently becoming very attractive. Such concepts can offer accurate and fastaerodynamic response and therefore achieve a significant load reduction. The latest developments and theresearch efforts of the authors in this field described in this paper as well as the performance of some of theinvestigated solutions. Some of the critical aspects of AFC concepts are also outlined.