A survey of modelling methods for high-fidelity wind farm simulations using large eddy simulation

Breton, Simon-Philippe; Sumner, Jonathon; Sørensen, Jens Nørkær; Hansen, Kurt Schaldemose; Sarmast, Sasan; Ivanell, Stefan

doi:10.1098/rsta.2016.0097

Cited by 84 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 127 publications

(214 reference statements)

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“…Unfortunately, the operation of wind turbines is negatively impacted by wakes created by upstream turbines. For reviews on wind farm modeling, we refer to other studies . An overview of research challenges for the wind energy community is discussed by van Kuik et al…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large eddy simulations of the effect of vertical staggering in large wind farms

2018

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In order to study the effect of vertical staggering in large wind farms, large eddy simulations (LES) of large wind farms with a regular turbine layout aligned with the given wind direction were conducted. In the simulations, we varied the hub heights of consecutive downstream rows to create vertically staggered wind farms. We analysed the effect of streamwise and spanwise turbine spacing, the wind farm layout, the turbine rotor diameter, and hub height difference between consecutive downstream turbine rows on the average power output. We find that vertical staggering significantly increases the power production in the entrance region of large wind farms and is more effective when the streamwise turbine spacing and turbine diameter are smaller. Surprisingly, vertical staggering does not significantly improve the power production in the fully developed regime of the wind farm. The reason is that the downward vertical kinetic energy flux, which brings high velocity fluid from above the wind farm towards the hub height plane, does not increase due to vertical staggering. Thus, the shorter wind turbines are effectively sheltered from the atmospheric flow above the wind farm that supplies the energy, which limits the benefit of vertical staggering. In some cases, a vertically staggered wind farm even produced less power than the corresponding non vertically staggered reference wind farm. In such cases, the production of shorter turbines is significantly negatively impacted while the production of the taller turbine is only increased marginally.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large eddy simulations of the effect of vertical staggering in large wind farms

2018

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“…To this day, a number of WFSs exists, offering a multitude of modelling options, including modelling the ambient atmospheric flow conditions, various turbine parametrisations (eg, actuator disc [AD], actuator line [AL], or actuator surface [AS] models) as well as active control either on a turbine or plant level. A review of state‐of‐the‐art LES codes for wind farm simulations was recently presented by Breton et al Examples of WFS are the EllipSys3D, the EPFL model, the JHU model, NREL's SOWFA, the SP‐Wind model, WiTTS, VWiS, PALM, SnS, and YALES2 . The various models employ different discretisation schemes (eg, finite differences/volumes or pseudo‐spectral) and often use second‐ to fourth‐order accurate schemes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

WInc3D: A novel framework for turbulence‐resolving simulations of wind farm wake interactions

2020

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A fast and efficient turbulence-resolving computational framework, dubbed as WInc3D (Wind Incompressible 3-Dimensional solver), is presented and validated in this paper. WInc3D offers a unified, highly scalable, high-fidelity framework for the study of the flow structures and turbulence of wind farm wakes and their impact on the individual turbines' power and loads.Its unique properties lie on the use of higher-order numerical schemes with ''spectral-like'' accuracy, a highly efficient parallelisation strategy which allows the code to scale up to O(10 4 ) computing processors and software compactness (use of only native solvers/models) with virtually no dependence to external libraries. The work presents an overview of the current modelling capabilities along with model validation. The presented applications demonstrate the ability of WInc3D to be used for testing farm-level optimal control strategies using turbine wakes under yawed conditions. Examples are provided for two turbines operating in-line as well as a small array of 16 turbines operating under ''Greedy'' and ''Co-operative'' yaw angle settings.These large-scale simulations were performed with up to 8192 computational cores for under 24 hours, for a computational domain discretised with O(10 9 ) mesh nodes. KEYWORDShigh-order wind farm simulator, optimal farm control, wind farm wakes INTRODUCTIONWind turbines operating within large-scale wind plants interact with each other through their wakes. Surveys over a number of utility-scale wind farms (ef, Horns Rev I, Nysted, Anholt, London array, etc) have shown that wakes are responsible for annual energy losses of up to 20%. [1][2][3][4] Additionally, wake-generated turbulence can significantly increase fatigue loading and therefore the lifetime of wind turbine blades. 5 Numerical predictions of wind farm wakes are often based on simple, analytical models such as the well-known Park model 6,7 or the most recent integrated framework FLORIS, 8 which also allows for layout or control optimisation (eg, turbines under yawed conditions). While such models can be used for many design or optimisation purposes, they cannot provide insight into the complex interactions between the individual wakes and atmospheric turbulence. To study the turbulent structure of turbine wakes and their impact on farm-level operation numerically, high-performance numerical codes have been devised, which are often based on large-eddy simulation (LES) and turbine parametrisations (eg, actuator line). Such frameworks often referred to as wind farms simulators (WFS) can provide integrated solutions by resolving Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) dynamics to a desired spatial and temporal scale, while accounting for the aero-servo-elastic behaviour of the individual wind turbines. To this day, a number of WFSs exists, offering a multitude of modelling options, including modelling the ambient atmospheric flow conditions, various turbine parametrisations (eg, actuator disc [AD], actuator line [AL], or actuator surface [AS] models) as well as ac...

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“…Simplified vortex models were first developed by Joukowsky and Prandtl a century ago, and were later supported by experimental data and (more recently) by high-accuracy numerical simulations. While direct numerical simulations are still limited to low Reynolds numbers, LESs are becoming a viable tool to perform numerical experiments able to enhance our current understanding [6,7]. There are still several issues regarding the modelling of the environmental turbulent field (such as surface boundary and inflow conditions), and of the turbines (such as the actuator disc and actuator line models, all motivated by the need to avoid the simulation of the blade boundary layer to reduce the computational cost), but progress is rapid and new results are expected in the coming years.…”

Section: (B) Wind-turbine Aerodynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A mainly builds on presentations [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] made at the EUROMECH Colloquium 576, Wind Farms in Complex Terrain, which took place at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, over 3 days in June 2016. The main focus of the Colloquium was the various issues related to complex terrains, mainly from the aerodynamic, meteorological and noise-propagation points of view.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The topics include wind statistics on both the micro-and macro-scale level [2], the effect of surface roughness on the description of boundary-layer flow physics [3,4], the effect of complex terrain on sound propagation [5], as well as various strategies for modelling the flow field around wind turbines [6][7][8] and wind farms [9][10][11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Introduction Wind farms in complex terrains: an introduction

Alfredsson

Segalini

2017

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of sustainable energy production. As more wind turbines are coming into operation, the best locations are already becoming occupied by turbines, and wind-farm developers have to look for new and still available areas—locations that may not be ideal such as complex terrain landscapes. In these locations, turbulence and wind shear are higher, and in general wind conditions are harder to predict. Also, the modelling of the wakes behind the turbines is more complicated, which makes energy-yield estimates more uncertain than under ideal conditions. This theme issue includes 10 research papers devoted to various fluid-mechanics aspects of using wind energy in complex terrains and illustrates recent progress and future developments in this important field. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Wind energy in complex terrains’.

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A survey of modelling methods for high-fidelity wind farm simulations using large eddy simulation

Cited by 84 publications

References 127 publications

Large eddy simulations of the effect of vertical staggering in large wind farms

Large eddy simulations of the effect of vertical staggering in large wind farms

WInc3D: A novel framework for turbulence‐resolving simulations of wind farm wake interactions

Introduction Wind farms in complex terrains: an introduction

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