Analytical Modeling for Prediction of Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbines Power Generation in Wind Farms Based on an Analytical Wake Model

Abstract

The development of models that predict power production of wind farms (WFs) by considering the interacting wakes is important; because wakes of the turbines exert a significant influence on power production of turbines, and hence on the layout of wind turbines in WFs. Thus, the purpose of present study was to provide an innovative analytical method for the prediction of power generation of the WFs that have a flat terrain and are consisted of horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs) with the same hub height. The methodology employed utilized an analytical Gaussian model of HAWT wake to develop an analytical model that calculates the effective wind velocity acting on the downstream HAWT(s), which is further used for reading its generated power from the turbine’s catalog; thus, providing the generated power of the WF as the output. The results of presented model were validated by the field measurements data of Horns Rev WF and also were compared to two analytical models for predicting the generated power. The results were compared with two numerical simulations of the literature, and the output data of three commercial software. Moreover, the error analysis revealed that the presented model mostly showed superior accuracy in predicting the field measurements data.