Wake interaction of wind turbines

Background

Wind farms nowadays operate far from optimally. It has been shown that significant performance losses occur for turbines subject to the wake flow of upstream turbines. To enable an efficient use of the terrain available for wind farms it is important to know how to place and operate turbines such that their combined power output is maximized. 

Aims
This project aims to understand the detailed flow physics in the wakes of wind turbines. This knowledge can be put to use to optimize the operation of complete wind farms, e.g. by introducing controlled yaw misalignment to upstream wind turbines to redirect their wakes around downstream turbines.

Approaches

We use the spectral-element code Nek5000 in conjunction with the well-known actuator-line method to model the wind-turbine flow. The method has been validated against experiments and other numerical simulations proving that it provides sound results. 

Keywords
Wind turbine wake interaction

Project leaders
Dan S. Henningson, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Linné FLOW Centre, Dept. of Mechanics

Other project members
Elektra Kleusberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Linné FLOW Centre, Dept. of Mechanics

Other funding agencies

Swedish Energy Agency 

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