Windbreak Effects Within Infinite Wind Farms

Nicolas Tobin and Leonardo P. Chamorro
Additional contact information
Nicolas Tobin: Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Leonardo P. Chamorro: Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 8, 1-12

Abstract: Building upon a recent study that showed windbreaks to be effective in increasing the power output of a wind turbine, the potential of windbreaks in a large wind farm is explored using simplified formulations. A top-down boundary layer approach is combined with methods of estimating both the roughness effects of windbreaks and the induced inviscid speed-up for nearby turbines to investigate power production impact for several layouts of infinite wind farms. Results suggest that the negative impact of windbreak wakes for an infinite wind farm will outweigh the local inviscid speed-up for realistic inter-turbine spacings, with the break-even point expected at a spacing of ?25 rotor diameters. However, the possibility that windbreaks may be applicable in finite and other wind farm configurations remains open. Inspection of the windbreak porosity reveals an impact on the magnitude of power perturbation, but not whether the change is positive or negative. Predictions from the boundary-layer approach are validated with power measurements from large-eddy simulations.

Keywords: wind energy; windbreak; atmospheric boundary layer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/8/1140/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/8/1140/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:10:y:2017:i:8:p:1140-:d:106845

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().