Modeling of Flow Acceleration Around Wind Farms

Recent measurements from operating wind farms demonstrate that the layout of the farm and interactions between turbine wakes strongly affects the overall efficiency of the wind farm. In some wind farms arranged in rectangular layouts, winds coming from the direction of the rectangular corner create a potential acceleration around the wind farm. This acceleration inherently leads to stronger local wind speeds at wind turbines downstream of the corner turbine, thereby increasing the power output of the downstream turbines. In this study, computational models are developed to predict this complex behavior seen in wind farms. The model used to examine these effects is a fully three-dimensional unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes code, with the turbulence model turned off. Preliminary results show an optimum spacing configuration is possible. However, the results have yet to be verified at higher Reynolds number, which will be the effort of future work. Ultimately, these tools may lead to more optimal wind farm layouts.