Cumulative Interactions between the Global Blockage and Wake Effects as Observed by an Engineering Model and Large-Eddy Simulations

Beatriz Cañadillas (), Richard Foreman, Gerald Steinfeld and Nick Robinson
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Beatriz Cañadillas: Renewables, UL International GmbH, 26122 Oldenburg, Germany
Richard Foreman: Renewables, UL International GmbH, 26122 Oldenburg, Germany
Gerald Steinfeld: ForWind, Institute of Physics, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
Nick Robinson: UL International, Richmond, BC V6V 2V4, Canada

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 7, 1-24

Abstract: By taking into account the turbine type, terrain, wind climate and layout, the effects of wind turbine wakes and other losses, engineering models enable the rapid estimation of energy yields for prospective and existing wind farms. We extend the capability of engineering models, such as the existing deep-array wake model, to account for additional losses that may arise due to the presence of clusters of wind farms, such as the global blockage effect and large-scale wake effects, which become more significant with increasing thermal stratification. The extended strategies include an enhanced wind-farm-roughness approach which assumes an infinite wind farm, and recent developments account for the upstream flow blockage. To test the plausibility of such models in capturing the additional blockage and wake losses in real wind farm clusters, the extended strategies are compared with large-eddy simulations of the flow through a cluster of three wind farms located in the German sector of the North Sea, as well as real measurements of wind power within these wind farms. Large-eddy simulations and wind farm measurements together suggest that the extensions of the Openwind model help capture the different flow features arising from flow blockage and cluster effects, but further model refinement is needed to account for higher-order effects, such as the effect of the boundary-layer height, which is not currently included in standard engineering models.

Keywords: large-eddy simulation; offshore wind farms; openwind; global blockage effect; wind farm wake clusters (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: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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