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Project

Meso-micro feedback effects in large wind farms and wind-farm clusters

Wind energy is growing into Europe’s most important green energy source, with a lot of offshore development foreseen in the North Sea. Wind farms and turbines keep growing in size: recent offshore tenders in Borselle (NL) surpass the GW size, while the largest turbine to date has a rated power of 8MW and tip height of 190m. It is well known that wind farms at these scales interact with the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) through the accumulated effect of turbine wakes. Therefore, design and simulation tools focus on what is called in atmospheric terms the micro-scale regime. However, very recently, it was shown that large wind farms excite gravity waves in the free atmosphere, which interact significantly with the farm’s efficiency. This happens at scales that are much larger than micro scales, falling in the atmospheric meso-scale range. To date, the inclusion of meso-scale effects in wind-farm optimization and control is fully absent, and insight into the interaction that takes place at the interface between meso and micro scales is lacking. We study these interactions using high-fidelity two-way coupled meso–micro simulations that we develop for that purpose. Moreover, we consider for the first time ever the implications of wind-farm meso interaction on optimal design and operation of wind farms and wind farm clusters. Of particular interest is dynamic wind-farm control, as this will in turn excite unsteady gravity waves that may favorably interact with power extraction.

Date:1 Jan 2018 →  31 Dec 2021
Keywords:Meso-micro feedback, Wind farms, Wind farm clusters
Disciplines:Catalysis and reacting systems engineering, Chemical product design and formulation, General chemical and biochemical engineering, Process engineering, Separation and membrane technologies, Transport phenomena, Other (bio)chemical engineering