Design Wind Speed Evaluation Technique in Wind Turbine Installation Point by Using the Meteorological and CFD Models

Abstract

It is highly important in Japan to choose a good site for wind turbines, because the spatial distribution of wind speed is quite complicated over steep complex terrain. We have been developing the unsteady numerical model called the RIAM-COMPACT (Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Computational Prediction of Airflow over Complex Terrain). The RIAM-COMPACT is based on the LES (Large-Eddy Simulation). The object domain of the RIAM-COMPACT is from several m to several km, and can predict the airflow and gas diffusion over complex terrain with high precision. In the present paper, the design wind speed evaluation technique in wind turbine installation point by using the mesoscale meteorological model and RIAM-COMPACT CFD model was proposed. The design wind speed to be used for designing WTGs can be calculated by multiplying the ratio of the mean wind speed at the hub-height to the mean upper-air wind speed at the inflow boundary, i.e., the fractional increase of the mean hub-height wind speed, by the reduction ratio, R. The fractional increase of the mean hub-height wind speed was evaluated using the CFD simulation results. This method was proposed as Approach 1 in the present paper. A value of 61.9 m/s was obtained for the final design wind speed, Uh, in Approach 1. In the evaluation procedure of the design wind speed in Approach 2, neither the above-mentioned reduction rate, R, nor an upper-air wind speed of 1.7 Vo, where Vo is the reference wind speed, was used. Instead, the value of the maximum wind speed which was obtained from the typhoon simulation for each of the investigated wind directions was adopted. When the design wind speed was evaluated using the 50-year recurrence value, the design wind speed was 48.3 m/s. When a somewhat conservative safety factor was applied, that is, when the 100 year recurrence value was used instead, the design wind speed was 52.9 m/s.