Search for: All records

The dynamics of the turbulent atmospheric boundary layer play a fundamental role in wind farm energy production, governing the velocity field that enters the farm as well as the turbulent mixing that regenerates energy for extraction at downstream rows. Understanding the dynamic interactions among turbines, wind farms, and the atmospheric boundary layer can therefore be beneficial in improving the efficiency of wind farm control approaches. Anticipated increases in the sizes of new wind farms to meet renewable energy targets will increase the importance of exploiting this understanding to advance wind farm control capabilities. This review discusses approaches for modeling and estimation of the wind farm flow field that have exploited such knowledge in closed-loop control, to varying degrees. We focus on power tracking as an example application that will be of critical importance as wind farms transition into their anticipated role as major suppliers of electricity. The discussion highlights the benefits of including the dynamics of the flow field in control and points to critical shortcomings of the current approaches. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems, Volume 5 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates. 

Motivated by the need for compact descriptions of the evolution of non-classical wakes behind yawed wind turbines, we develop an analytical model to predict the shape of curled wakes. Interest in such modelling arises due to the potential of wake steering as a strategy for mitigating power reduction and unsteady loading of downstream turbines in wind farms. We first estimate the distribution of the shed vorticity at the wake edge due to both yaw offset and rotating blades. By considering the wake edge as an ideally thin vortex sheet, we describe its evolution in time moving with the flow. Vortex sheet equations are solved using a power series expansion method, and an approximate solution for the wake shape is obtained. The vortex sheet time evolution is then mapped into a spatial evolution by using a convection velocity. Apart from the wake shape, the lateral deflection of the wake including ground effects is modelled. Our results show that there exists a universal solution for the shape of curled wakes if suitable dimensionless variables are employed. For the case of turbulent boundary layer inflow, the decay of vortex sheet circulation due to turbulent diffusion is included. Finally, we modify the Gaussian wake model by incorporating the predicted shape and deflection of the curled wake, so that we can calculate the wake profiles behind yawed turbines. Model predictions are validated against large-eddy simulations and laboratory experiments for turbines with various operating conditions. 

A quantitative understanding of the dominant mechanisms that govern the generation and decay of the counter-rotating vortex pair (CVP) produced by yawed wind turbines is needed to fully realize the potential of yawing for wind farm power maximization and regulation. Observations from large eddy simulations (LES) of yawed wind turbines in the turbulent atmospheric boundary layer and concepts from the aircraft trailing vortex literature inform a model for the shed vorticity and circulation. The model is formed through analytical integration of simplified forms of the vorticity transport equation. Based on an eddy viscosity approach, it uses the boundary-layer friction velocity as the velocity scale and the width of the vorticity distribution itself as the length scale. As with the widely used Jensen model for wake deficit evolution in wind farms, our analytical expressions do not require costly numerical integration of differential equations. The predicted downstream decay of maximum vorticity and total circulation agree well with LES results. We also show that the vorticity length scale grows linearly with downstream distance and find several power laws for the decay of maximum vorticity. These results support the notion that the decay of the CVP is dominated by gradual cancellation of the vorticity at the line of symmetry of the wake through cross-diffusion.