This research is to characterize the wake effect from a cluster of offshore wind turbines with the purpose of optimizing spacing between separate farms to avoid wake interference. Placing wind turbines within a field of disturbed flow decreases power output, and in some cases, threatens structural integrity. Unsteady loading and fluxes in wind turbine power generation are born out of turbulence and can further lead to a reduction in the overall energy production of a wind farm. As the offshore wind industry exhibits rapid growth, an immediate need for standards that enable optimization of farm placement for offshore development exists. Wake characterization was accomplished in this research through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling. ANSYS CFX was used in this research to simulate the wake produced by offshore wind turbine arrays located near the shores of Main Duck Island in Lake Ontario using full rotor geometry representation. These offshore wind farms are currently in the planning, preconstruction phase, and there is no raw data for validation of the CFD model so wind tunnel testing was done to validate the modelling techniques employed in the array simulations. A percent error of 9.5 % between the two data sets was achieved. Three different array configurations were simulated in ANSYS, each containing a different number of rows. The wake 7 x 4 array had a recovery distance of approximately 130 rotor diameters. Approximately 89% recovery is achieved at 6.8 km downstream from the 6 x 4 array and at 9 km downstream from the 7 x 4 array. A comparison simulation was run using the 7 x 4 array with an increased inlet speed. Results of this simulation revealed a 23 % increase in wake recovery length. Strategically informing offshore wind farm siting from wake research will maximize power extraction from clean available resources.ii
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