TY - JOUR
T1 - Investigating wind farm blockage in a neutral boundary layer using large-eddy simulations
AU - Strickland, Jessica M.I.
AU - Stevens, Richard J.A.M.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Christiane Montavon and Antonio Segalini for insightful discussions. This work is part of the Shell-NWO/FOM-initiative Computational sciences for energy research of Shell and Chemical Sciences, Earth and Live Sciences, Physical Sciences, FOM and STW, and an STW VIDI grant (No. 14868 ). This work was carried out on the national e-infrastructure of SURFsara, a subsidiary of SURF cooperation, the collaborative ICT organization for Dutch education and research.
Funding Information:
We thank Christiane Montavon and Antonio Segalini for insightful discussions. This work is part of the Shell-NWO/FOM-initiative Computational sciences for energy research of Shell and Chemical Sciences, Earth and Live Sciences, Physical Sciences, FOM and STW, and an STW VIDI grant (No. 14868). This work was carried out on the national e-infrastructure of SURFsara, a subsidiary of SURF cooperation, the collaborative ICT organization for Dutch education and research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)
PY - 2022/9/1
Y1 - 2022/9/1
N2 - Understanding how blockage influences large wind farms is essential as the first row produces the most energy and is often used as a reference for the subsequent rows. We use large-eddy simulations to investigate wind farm blockage by comparing a stand-alone turbine, an infinite row of turbines, and a wind farm with eight rows. We find that the blockage effect for dense turbine arrays is highly dependent on the non-dimensional turbine spacing. Spanwise neighboring turbines appear to benefit from deflected flow, while close downstream turbines enhance flow over the wind farm, reducing productivity at the front. In agreement with the uniform inflow wind tunnel measurements by Segalini and Dahlberg (2020), we find that the effect of downstream turbines follows a universal trend as a function of the average inter-turbine spacing when the performance of the first wind farm row is normalized with the corresponding isolated row case. However, we also demonstrate that the wind farm layout strongly affects blockage as the results do not follow a universal trend when normalized with the performance of a stand-alone turbine.
AB - Understanding how blockage influences large wind farms is essential as the first row produces the most energy and is often used as a reference for the subsequent rows. We use large-eddy simulations to investigate wind farm blockage by comparing a stand-alone turbine, an infinite row of turbines, and a wind farm with eight rows. We find that the blockage effect for dense turbine arrays is highly dependent on the non-dimensional turbine spacing. Spanwise neighboring turbines appear to benefit from deflected flow, while close downstream turbines enhance flow over the wind farm, reducing productivity at the front. In agreement with the uniform inflow wind tunnel measurements by Segalini and Dahlberg (2020), we find that the effect of downstream turbines follows a universal trend as a function of the average inter-turbine spacing when the performance of the first wind farm row is normalized with the corresponding isolated row case. However, we also demonstrate that the wind farm layout strongly affects blockage as the results do not follow a universal trend when normalized with the performance of a stand-alone turbine.
KW - Wind energy
KW - Wind farm
KW - Renewables
KW - Fluid mechanics
KW - Fluid dynamics
KW - Turbulence
KW - Large eddy simulation
KW - Blockage
KW - Power production
KW - Computational fluid mechanics
KW - High performance computing
KW - UT-Hybrid-D
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85132332558
U2 - 10.1016/j.euromechflu.2022.05.004
DO - 10.1016/j.euromechflu.2022.05.004
M3 - Article
SN - 0997-7546
VL - 95
SP - 303
EP - 314
JO - European journal of mechanics. B - Fluids
JF - European journal of mechanics. B - Fluids
ER -
SDG 7 Affordable and Clean Energy