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A meso–micro atmospheric perturbation model for wind farm blockage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2024

Koen Devesse Open the ORCID record for Koen Devesse [Opens in a new window] ,
Luca Lanzilao Open the ORCID record for Luca Lanzilao [Opens in a new window]  and
Johan Meyers Open the ORCID record for Johan Meyers [Opens in a new window]
Koen Devesse*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Luca Lanzilao
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Johan Meyers
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

As wind farms continue to grow in size, mesoscale effects such as blockage and gravity waves become increasingly important. Allaerts & Meyers (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 862, 2019, pp. 990–1028) proposed an atmospheric perturbation model (APM) that can simulate the interaction of wind farms and the atmospheric boundary layer while keeping computational costs low. The model resolves the mesoscale flow, and couples to a wake model to estimate the turbine inflow velocities at the microscale. This study presents a new way of coupling the mesoscale APM to a wake model, based on matching the velocity between the models throughout the farm. This method performs well, but requires good estimates of the turbine-level velocity fields by the wake model. Additionally, we investigate the mesoscale effects of a large wind farm, and find that aside from the turbine forces and increased turbulence levels, the dispersive stresses due to subgrid flow heterogeneity also play an important role at the entrance of the farm, and contribute to the global blockage effect. By using the wake model coupling, we can explicitly incorporate these stresses in the model. The resulting APM is validated using 27 prior large-eddy simulations of a large wind farm under different atmospheric conditions. The APM and large-eddy simulation results are compared on both mesoscale and turbine scale, and on turbine power output. The APM captures the overall effects that gravity waves have on wind farm power production, and significantly outperforms standard wake models.

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: Atmospheric flows Geophysical and Geological Flows: Internal waves Wakes/Jets: Wakes
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 998 , 10 November 2024 , A63
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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