The Coriolis force and the direction of rotation of the blades significantly affect the wake of wind turbines

Reza Nouri, Ahmad Vasel-Be-Hagh and Cristina L. Archer

Applied Energy, 2020, vol. 277, issue C, No S0306261920310230

Abstract: The aerodynamic interactions of wind turbines within a wind farm cause major energy losses. Yaw control is a promising active strategy to tackle this issue in real time during the operation of the plant. The wake of a wind turbine can be steered away from its downstream counterparts by imposing a yaw angle to its rotor. Studying the impact of intentional yaw misalignment on the performance of wind farms located in the northern hemisphere has revealed that, for columns aligned with the wind direction, positive yaw misalignment can lead to an overall increase in the annual energy production, while negative misalignment reduces it. Note that our emphasis is on the front-row turbine being the only yawed turbine of the column. Two unverified reasons have been proposed for the difference between the impact of positive and negative yaw misalignment: (i) the clockwise rotation of the turbine blades and (ii) the Coriolis effect. This paper investigates these two potential explanations by conducting six large-eddy simulations of flow through a wind farm of ten wind turbines located in the northern hemisphere. Results indicate that the Coriolis force and the direction of rotation of the blades both contribute to the inconsistency between the impact of positive and negative yaws on the net power production. The Coriolis force appears to be more influential. The difference between applying a positive and a negative yaw angle to the front-row turbine was found to be approximately 17%. This difference was reduced to almost 7% when the Coriolis force was relaxed, and to approximately 11% when the turbines were set to rotate counter clockwise. Note that a separate study is required to investigate this concept in the southern hemisphere.

Keywords: Wake steering; Wake redirection; Wake control; Yaw misalignment; Coriolis effect; Wind power; Renewable energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920310230
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:277:y:2020:i:c:s0306261920310230

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115511

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().