Coalescing Wind Turbine Wakes
Abstract
A team of researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Statoil used large-eddy simulations to numerically investigate the merging wakes from upstream offshore wind turbines. Merging wakes are typical phenomena in wind farm flows in which neighboring turbine wakes consolidate to form complex flow patterns that are as yet not well understood. In the present study, three 6-MW turbines in a row were subjected to a neutrally stable atmospheric boundary layer flow. As a result, the wake from the farthest upstream turbine conjoined the downstream wake, which significantly altered the subsequent velocity deficit structures, turbulence intensity, and the global meandering behavior. The complexity increased even more when the combined wakes from the two upstream turbines mixed with the wake generated by the last turbine, thereby forming a "triplet" structure. Although the influence of the wake generated by the first turbine decayed with downstream distance, the mutated wakes from the second turbine continued to influence the downstream wake. Two mirror-image angles of wind directions that yielded partial wakes impinging on the downstream turbines yielded asymmetric wake profiles that could be attributed to the changing flow directions in the rotor plane induced by the Coriolis force. In conclusion, the turbine wakesmore »
- Authors:
-
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Statoil, Stavanger (Norway); Bergen Univ., Bergen (Norway). Geophysical Inst.
- Statoil, Stavanger (Norway)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Wind and Water Technologies Office (EE-4W)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1220754
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/JA-5000-64325
Journal ID: ISSN 1742-6588
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC36-08GO28308
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Physics. Conference Series
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 625; Journal Issue: 1; Related Information: Journal of Physics: Conference Series; Journal ID: ISSN 1742-6588
- Publisher:
- IOP Publishing
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 17 WIND ENERGY; wind turbine; wakes
Citation Formats
Lee, S., Churchfield, M., Sirnivas, S., Moriarty, P., Nielsen, F. G., Skaare, B., and Byklum, E. Coalescing Wind Turbine Wakes. United States: N. p., 2015.
Web. doi:10.1088/1742-6596/625/1/012023.
Lee, S., Churchfield, M., Sirnivas, S., Moriarty, P., Nielsen, F. G., Skaare, B., & Byklum, E. Coalescing Wind Turbine Wakes. United States. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/625/1/012023
Lee, S., Churchfield, M., Sirnivas, S., Moriarty, P., Nielsen, F. G., Skaare, B., and Byklum, E. Thu .
"Coalescing Wind Turbine Wakes". United States. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/625/1/012023. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1220754.
@article{osti_1220754,
title = {Coalescing Wind Turbine Wakes},
author = {Lee, S. and Churchfield, M. and Sirnivas, S. and Moriarty, P. and Nielsen, F. G. and Skaare, B. and Byklum, E.},
abstractNote = {A team of researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Statoil used large-eddy simulations to numerically investigate the merging wakes from upstream offshore wind turbines. Merging wakes are typical phenomena in wind farm flows in which neighboring turbine wakes consolidate to form complex flow patterns that are as yet not well understood. In the present study, three 6-MW turbines in a row were subjected to a neutrally stable atmospheric boundary layer flow. As a result, the wake from the farthest upstream turbine conjoined the downstream wake, which significantly altered the subsequent velocity deficit structures, turbulence intensity, and the global meandering behavior. The complexity increased even more when the combined wakes from the two upstream turbines mixed with the wake generated by the last turbine, thereby forming a "triplet" structure. Although the influence of the wake generated by the first turbine decayed with downstream distance, the mutated wakes from the second turbine continued to influence the downstream wake. Two mirror-image angles of wind directions that yielded partial wakes impinging on the downstream turbines yielded asymmetric wake profiles that could be attributed to the changing flow directions in the rotor plane induced by the Coriolis force. In conclusion, the turbine wakes persisted for extended distances in the present study, which is a result of low aerodynamic surface roughness typically found in offshore conditions},
doi = {10.1088/1742-6596/625/1/012023},
journal = {Journal of Physics. Conference Series},
number = 1,
volume = 625,
place = {United States},
year = {Thu Jun 18 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Thu Jun 18 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}
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Works referencing / citing this record:
Wind Turbine Wake Characterization from Temporally Disjunct 3-D Measurements
journal, November 2016
- Doubrawa, Paula; Barthelmie, Rebecca; Wang, Hui
- Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Issue 11