Wind Farm Blockage and the Consequences of Neglecting Its Impact on Energy Production

Autor: James Bleeg, Mark Purcell, Renzo Ruisi, Elizabeth Traiger
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Energies, Vol 11, Iss 6, p 1609 (2018)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1996-1073
DOI: 10.3390/en11061609
Popis: Measurements taken before and after the commissioning of three wind farms reveal that the wind speeds just upstream of each wind farm decrease relative to locations farther away after the turbines are turned on. At a distance of two rotor diameters upstream, the average derived relative slowdown is 3.4%; at seven to ten rotor diameters upstream, the average slowdown is 1.9%. Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations point to wind-farm-scale blockage as the primary cause of these slowdowns. Blockage effects also cause front row turbines to produce less energy than they each would operating in isolation. Wind energy prediction procedures in use today ignore this effect, resulting in an overprediction bias that pervades the entire wind farm.
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