Posters

Abstract

The performance of wind farms is influenced by atmospheric conditions, which can be described as microscale, mesoscale, or macroscale. Due to the size of wind farms being planned and constructed today, the variation in wind direction within and between wind farms is becoming increasingly important for accurate power output estimations and wind farm control strategies. Classical wake models assume a constant wind direction over the wind farm area. This assumption is not valid in cases (here, collectively described as ‘curved flow') where the ambient flow is curved, or the flow direction is deflected inside the wind farm, due to wake steering control. The research presented here develops and verifies a prototype model that simulates improved methodologies. These methodologies allow WakeBlaster, a parabolic 3-D RANS model, to simulate wake deflection effects. The results predicted by the curved flow model are presented for four wind farm cases. Each of the cases features a comparison between the curved ambient flow and the model predictions with a constant ambient flow direction. For each of the cases studied, the bias caused by not considering the curved flow for the wind farm power and energy production estimates is shown. This study quantifies the impact of curved ambient flow effects on wind farm energy production, and their potential to improve the accuracy of wind farm performance modelling. The developed and proposed curved flow model is shown to be computationally efficient for simulating performance losses in wind farms. It allows for consideration of the curvature of the flow, due to complex terrain or meteorological factors, such as Coriolis, or wake steering. The curved ambient flow can (for example) be represented by mesoscale flow models, and it can be merged with a wind farm wake model via pre-processing and post-processing. The development contributes to a more accurate model for predicting wind turbine and wind farm performance, which in turn can lead to increased wind energy generation and improved wind farm yield.