Activities per year
Abstract
In order to study the effect of vertical staggering in large wind farms, large eddy simulations (LES) of large wind farms with a regular turbine layout aligned with the given wind direction were conducted. In the simulations, we varied the hub heights of consecutive downstream rows to create vertically staggered wind farms. We analysed the effect of streamwise and spanwise turbine spacing, the wind farm layout, the turbine rotor diameter, and hub height difference between consecutive downstream turbine rows on the average power output. We find that vertical staggering significantly increases the power production in the entrance region of large wind farms and is more effective when the streamwise turbine spacing and turbine diameter are smaller. Surprisingly, vertical staggering does not significantly improve the power production in the fully developed regime of the wind farm. The reason is that the downward vertical kinetic energy flux, which brings high velocity fluid from above the wind farm towards the hub height plane, does not increase due to vertical staggering. Thus, the shorter wind turbines are effectively sheltered from the atmospheric flow above the wind farm that supplies the energy, which limits the benefit of vertical staggering. In some cases, a vertically staggered wind farm even produced less power than the corresponding non vertically staggered reference wind farm. In such cases, the production of shorter turbines is significantly negatively impacted while the production of the taller turbine is only increased marginally.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 189-204 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Wind energy |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 12 Oct 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2019 |
Keywords
- atmospheric boundary layer
- large eddy simulation
- power production
- turbulence
- vertically staggered wind farm
- wake model
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Large eddy simulations of the effect of vertical staggering in large wind farms'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Activities
- 2 Oral presentation
-
Exploring a better turbine layout in vertically staggered wind farms
Mengqi Zhang (Speaker) & Richard Johannes Antonius Maria Stevens (Contributor)
20 Jun 2018Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation
-
Large eddy simulation study on the effect of vertical staggering in large-scale wind farms
Richard Johannes Antonius Maria Stevens (Speaker), Mark G. Arendshorst (Contributor) & Mengqi Zhang (Contributor)
19 Nov 2017Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation
Research output
- 21 Citations
- 1 Poster
-
Large eddy simulation study on the effect of vertical staggering in large-scale wind farms
Zhang, M. & Stevens, R. J. A. M., 12 Jan 2017.Research output: Contribution to conference › Poster › Academic