Wind Power

Profile: Aoife Henry

Daniel Morton — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 18:31:03 +0000

Profile: Aoife Henry Daniel Morton Tue, 04/01/2025 - 12:31

Daniel Morton

Aoife Henry, a graduate student in electrical, computer, and energy engineering in the group of Lucy Pao, explores forecast-enabled wind farm control. Aoife recently sharpened her science communication skills, winning the 2025 �� Boulder Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition last month. Since Aoife has just landed a postdoctoral scholarship (Stanford Sustainability Accelerator Fellowship, at the Doerr School of Sustainability) at Stanford, which starts in the summer, we interrupted her work to catch up with her and ask her some questions.

Where did you grow up?

Fun fact – I was actually born in Scotland. I had friends in Ireland later who somehow found out and I was referred to thereafter as the ‘Sneaky Brit’! I lived in Scotland until I was about six, and didn’t want to leave, but my parents, who are Irish, were ready to move home and we relocated to Cork. I lost the Scottish accent eventually.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

There was definitely a time when my dream job was being Bill Gates. I wanted to be a very wealthy philanthropist, who had a growing empire of businesses. I don’t know if that counts as a job description, and I don’t think I would stand by that now, but that was definitely my answer for a time. I still have something of an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to make an impact.

Tell us about your career path so far

When it came time to go to college I opted for the University College Dublin, they offered me a great scholarship to study electrical engineering. It is a bit different to the courses in the US, it is more about power systems, looking at very big things instead of very small things. During college I did a year exchange to UC San Diego which was really fun. Once I saw the price of health insurance I walked into a lab by the beach and asked for a job, and they gave me one! I got great work experience at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I had a really good time, I got to surf with my boss during the lunch break and I am still in touch with folks from there.

Once I finished that degree, I got itchy feet and wanted to go somewhere else. I applied to a few places, but I ended up doing a Masters in Energy Science and Technology at ETH in Zurich. Maybe not the most efficient route to a Ph.D., but I was really into cycling and trail running at the time and the scenery around there is stunning. I learnt a lot and it gave me a chance to learn German as well. There was also a chance to get more work experience, I worked with an electricity provider called EKZ, which gave me some interesting insights.

I had in the back of my head that I wanted to work for NREL one day, and I found that there was a connection between ETH and �� Boulder. There is an exchange program run by Britta Bergstrom, who does a really great job, called the Europe-Colorado Program, which provides opportunities for European students to find out more about doing a Ph.D. at �� Boulder. It clearly works! I ended up doing my Masters thesis here during deep COVID. It was the cheapest flight I have ever had, it was around $200 and the flight had six people on board!

When it came to choosing a Ph.D., I applied for positions at �� Boulder and two at ETH, and was offered all three, and had no idea what to do! There is a UK non-profit called 80,000 hours, the whole idea is to give free counselling to people on how to choose career paths that will make an impact. They helped me decide to pursue research in Wind Energy, which spoke to me, and took me to �� Boulder. I interned at NREL at the end of my first year, and I spent a summer working at Apple.

Describe the research that you are currently investigating

I work in the area of combining machine learning and forecasting with automatic operation of wind farms to improve their power gains. I used none of these words in my 3MT, I talked about sheep.

You were selected as the Winner of the 2025 �� Boulder Three Minute Thesis competition, what drew you to compete?

I first heard about 3MT years ago and I was just really impressed by the people who were doing it. It doesn’t cost too much to give it a go. You become the person who tried as soon as you sign up. As terrifying as it was, I was so impressed by the folks doing it. For folks who aren’t sure whether to give it a go, it is a great bunch of people at �� Boulder. Hailey Herman is the main organizer, and she is fantastic. She will take care of your, provides workshops and guidance and you will learn so much about public speaking and creative writing. It is a great way to meet a bunch of great people from across campus.

How do you find working in a collaborative space?

Something I really enjoy about working in an environment like those at �� Boulder and NREL is that it is full of people who are excited about science. They are not excited about just turning it into something profitable, they are excited by the science. There have been times in my research where I have ideas and I can go and talk to experts really easily. There is such an openness to discussing ideas, to diving into thinking about things.

What drew you in to working in wind energy?

I don’t remember exactly when I first became aware of climate change as a teenager, but that scared me. I was the person who was obsessively turning off lights. I really cared a lot about the situation. Trying to make some dent in that has been a driving force for me for a long time. I was passionate about coding. There were these non-profit schools called Coder Dojo, where kids would go and learn to code, and I got pulled in. It meant that I had 4-5 years of coding experience above my peers at a time when I was pretty neuroplastic. The fluency I have built with coding is one of my greatest strengths, and it is a kind of work that I really enjoy especially the problem solving aspects. What I do now really pairs those interests well.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I have long had a love of trail running and cycling, but recently I have got into stand-up comedy. It was something I had wanted to do for quite a while. I can’t tell you how scared I was the first time. It was at the Trident in Boulder, which is quite small, and my strategy was to fill the room with my friends. I get a kick of doing the performance and I get a kick out of writing the jokes, figuring out the right wording and the timing. As nerve-racking as the performance is, there is an excitement to it as well.

Daniel Morton — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:03:00 +0000

Innovative Wind Turbine Control Earns Lucy Pao Prestigious IEEE Award Daniel Morton Thu, 12/19/2024 - 08:03

Daniel Morton

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) Fellow Lucy Pao, from the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering at University of Colorado Boulder, is travelling to Milan, Italy, this December to receive the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award.

Find out more

IEEE Conference on Decision and Control

Read the Article

ForWind Center

Collaboration Highlight

Each year a panel reviews papers nominated from the past two years and selects an article of high significance. The paper, published in 2022, describes the first experimental implementation of Model Predictive Control of the pitch angles of the blades in wind turbines. The Award Ceremony will be held on December 18, 2024, as part of the 2024 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, held at the Milan Convention Centre in Italy.

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is an established control technique that is popular in the general control systems community. One of the primary demonstrated applications for MPC is in process chemistry for the large-scale manufacture of pharmaceuticals and commodity chemicals. This paper describes, for the first time, the application of this technique in the blade pitch control of wind turbines. Control systems in wind turbines are essential for optimizing their performance, ensuring safety, and maximizing energy output. By monitoring key parameters such as blade pitch, rotor speed, yaw angle, and blade root bending moment, the control system can adapt to changing wind conditions, enhancing the efficiency of power generation and reducing mechanical stress on components, helping to extend the turbine’s lifespan.

“MPC is a very nice approach, but it is computationally complex,” explained Lucy. “There is an optimization that needs to be done at every time step, so getting it into a form where we could implement it, was a challenge”.

While MPC is a computationally intensive approach, the benefits for wind turbines are significant. Many wind turbine control systems are based on a feedback-only system, where the adjustments are based on feedback of what is happening now. MPC enables preview information to be included, so, for example, you can incorporate knowledge of a gust coming through and the controls can prepare the turbine ahead of time, which can reduce structural loading on that turbine. It changes the control system from simply being responsive to stimuli, to instead being proactive to knowledge of the conditions, essentially letting the wind turbine “see into the future”.

The MPC approach could have significant impacts on how wind turbines are controlled, not only improving their efficiency, but also reducing structural stress on the turbines and extending their lifetimes.

“We are really very excited about this award,” said Pao. “This has been a wonderful collaboration with our colleagues at the ForWind Center for Wind Energy Research in Oldenburg Germany. We started in 2016, with an experimental campaign in 2019 that led to this paper”. Misha Sinner, the lead author of the study, was a graduate student working with Lucy Pao and is now a Research Engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Misha travelled to Germany to lead this experimental campaign, and worked together with the team in Germany, led by Martin Kühn, to apply MPC to the turbines. “This was a complex experiment to run, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the team of experts and infrastructure at ForWind,” said Misha. “The collaboration has been a really symbiotic relationship; I really value Martin’s input, support, and feedback on the work,” said Lucy.

The collaboration was sparked over a meeting in Stuttgart in 2015. “Martin and I were both external evaluators on a PhD defense for a student at the University of Stuttgart. We had lots of opportunities to chat, and when I mentioned that I was coming up on a sabbatical, he suggested a fellowship that I could apply for that would enable me to work with them,” explained Lucy. This was the start of the long and fruitful collaboration among the team.

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 06:00:00 +0000

2024 DTU PhD Summer School in Remote Sensing Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/28/2024 - 00:00

In June 2024 RASEI hosted the DTU (Danish Technical University) for their Wind and Energy Systems PhD Summer School in Remote Sensing. RASEI Fellow Julie Lundquist was one of the key organizers.

This five-day summer school focused on advances in remote sensing techniques useful in wind energy. This summer school has been held every year for the past 20 years, with a few occasions outside of Denmark (Once in 2012 which was also hosted by RASEI at �� Boulder).

The school brought fifteen students from the US and Europe to Boulder, along with a dozen speakers. Speakers came together from DTU, NOAA, �� Boulder, NREL, PNNL, Texas Tech University and the University of Texas Dallas. The aim of this event was to expose the participants to the latest uses and applications in measuring the dynamics and thermodynamics of the atmosphere, and how these can be employed in wind energy applications. This includes a series of talks, poster presentation sessions, lab tours, including an outdoor weather lab, and ample opportunities for networking and team building.

This is only the second time that this school has been held in the United States, and the second time at �� Boulder.

Conference Website

06/24/2024 - 06/28/2024

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Wind Power

Profile: Aoife Henry

Where did you grow up?

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Tell us about your career path so far

Describe the research that you are currently investigating

You were selected as the Winner of the 2025 ���������� Boulder Three Minute Thesis competition, what drew you to compete?

How do you find working in a collaborative space?

What drew you in to working in wind energy?

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

What advice would you give to someone considering a similar path?

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Operational Pitch Actuation Dynamics for Offshore Wind Turbines Ranging from 5 to 50 MW

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Simulations suggest offshore wind farms modify low-level jets

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Innovative Wind Turbine Control Earns Lucy Pao Prestigious IEEE Award

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Overview of preparation for the American WAKE ExperimeNt (AWAKEN)

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A Tutorial on the Control of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines: Stability Challenges and Opportunities for Power Capture

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Control of Floating Offshore Wind Energy Systems: An Introduction to the Special Issue

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Investigation of H∞-Tuned Individual Pitch Control for Wind Turbines

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Control Co-Design of Wind Turbines

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2024 DTU PhD Summer School in Remote Sensing

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You were selected as the Winner of the 2025 �� Boulder Three Minute Thesis competition, what drew you to compete?