Spatiotemporal Correlations in the Power Output of Wind Farms: On the Impact of Atmospheric Stability

Nicolas Tobin, Adam Lavely, Sven Schmitz and Leonardo P. Chamorro
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Nicolas Tobin: Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Adam Lavely: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Sven Schmitz: Department of Aerospace Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Leonardo P. Chamorro: Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-12

Abstract: The dependence of temporal correlations in the power output of wind-turbine pairs on atmospheric stability is explored using theoretical arguments and wind-farm large-eddy simulations. For this purpose, a range of five distinct stability regimes, ranging from weakly stable to moderately convective, were investigated with the same aligned wind-farm layout used among simulations. The coherence spectrum between turbine pairs in each simulation was compared to theoretical predictions. We found with high statistical significance ( p < 0.01) that higher levels of atmospheric instability lead to higher coherence between turbines, with wake motions reducing correlations up to 40%. This is attributed to higher dominance of atmospheric motions over wakes in strongly unstable flows. Good agreement resulted with the use of an empirical model for wake-added turbulence to predict the variation of turbine power coherence with ambient turbulence intensity (R 2 = 0.82), though other empirical relations may be applicable. It was shown that improperly accounting for turbine–turbine correlations can substantially impact power variance estimates on the order of a factor of 4.

Keywords: atmospheric stability; coherence; turbulence; wind farm (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: 2019
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