OrcaFlex 10.3 introduced the turbine object, used to model horizontal axis wind turbines.

A key issue for wind turbine analysis is the modelling of the generator and blade control systems. Because these control systems are typically proprietary, OrcaFlex does not offer any built-in control system functionality. Rather, the user must specify the control systems through external functions.

When we released 10.3d, we updated the documentation to include some example external function controllers. The pertinent help topics are:

• Turbine data: Generator
• Turbine data: Blades

A guide to using external functions to model turbine controllers is available at https://github.com/Orcina-Ltd/turbine-controllers. This includes example Python controllers and an example of using external functions to wrap a Bladed style control DLL.

Other useful sources of information for turbine modelling:

• K01 Floating wind turbine example
• Turbine validation