Posters

Abstract

The Perdigão experiment in Portugal sets the new standard for atmospheric measurement campaigns relevant to wind energy. In this work we present Perdigão as a new standard reference case for onshore wind farm optimization studies. The site has two 4-5km long NW-SE oriented parallel ridges divided by a central valley and smaller settlements scattered at the foothills. This complex setting makes Perdigão a challenging case to study the effect of different strategies for onshore wind farm layout optimization. Many different measurements and sub-experiments were conducted across the Perdigão site during the months long measurement campaign. We establish the first complete 10min resource climatology from the high-resolution three component sonic recordings at 60m and 100m masts distributed across the site area. This resource model includes all siting parameters relevant to wind turbine fatigue loads following the IEC61400-1 ed. 4 standard. In this case study we analyse the effect of different optimization strategies for layout optimization and how external cost and price factors influence the wind farm feasibility. We study the effect of different scenarios for the future electricity price by assuming different levels seen in the recent drastic variations. Our study includes the objective functions: Annual Energy Production (AEP), Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE) and Net Present Value (NPV). Primary design constraints are introduced by enforcing minimum lifetimes for turbine components and maximum noise levels in nearby dwellings. Our optimization results for the Perdigão case highlight the importance of realistically accounting for the main costs of developing a wind farm. The results also show the negative effect of making the optimization too sensitive to very uncertain quantities like the future electricity price, but on other hand emphasize their importance for feasibility. Finally, our results demonstrate the importance of properly accounting for critical constraints in the optimization. Perdigão is the future primary benchmark case for wind energy. We present the first case study of different optimization strategies applied to the challenging site conditions at Perdigão.