Abstract
To assess wind resources, a number of simulations should be performed by wind direction, wind speed, and atmospheric stability bins to conduct micro-siting using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This study proposes a method of accelerating CFD convergence by generating initial conditions that are closer to the converged solution. In addition, the study proposes the ‘mirrored initial condition’ (IC) using the symmetry of wind direction and geography, the ‘composed IC’ using the vector composition principle, and the ‘shifted IC’ which assumes that the wind speed vectors are similar in conditions characterized by minute differences in wind direction as the well-posed initial conditions. They provided a significantly closer approximation to the converged flow field than did the conventional initial condition, which simply assumed a homogenous atmospheric boundary layer over the entire simulation domain. The results of this study show that the computation time taken for micro-siting can be shortened by around 35% when conducting CFD with 16 wind direction sectors by mixing the conventional and the proposed ICs properly.
Highlights
In a wind resource assessment (WRA) conducted to construct a wind farm, at least one or more meteorological towers should be installed at representative meteorological points within the candidate area, and the weather conditions, including seasonal changes, should be measured for at least one year
Initial conditions that are closer to the real flow field, i.e., the a solution that is converged as much
To perform micro-siting wind mapping for a wind resource assessment, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of a a total number of nD × nU × nL cases should be conducted with regard to the nD wind direction total number of nD × nU × nL cases should be conducted with regard to the nD wind direction sectors, nU wind speed bins, atmospheric stability intervals
Summary
In a wind resource assessment (WRA) conducted to construct a wind farm, at least one or more meteorological towers should be installed at representative meteorological points within the candidate area, and the weather conditions, including seasonal changes, should be measured for at least one year. The measurement data should be converted to statistical data on wind resources at the hub height of the wind turbine at the installation points to be able to calculate the amount of wind power generated. The meteorologically valid range of data measured with the meteorological tower is limited near the measurement point. Wind flow modeling should be performed to identify the wind resources across a wide range of candidate areas for the construction of a wind farm. The wind speed distribution by wind direction should be mapped in the candidate area [1]
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