Effect of Flow Inclination on Wind Turbine Performance

Abstract

This work examines the effect of flow inclination on the performance of a stand-alone wind turbine and of wind turbines operating in the wakes of upstream turbines. The experimental portion of this work, which includes performance and flow-field measurements, is conducted in the ETH dynamically-scaled wind turbine test facility, with a wind turbine model that can be inclined relative to the incoming flow. The performance of the wind turbine is measured with an in-line torque-meter and a 5-hole steady-state probe is used to detail the inflow and wake flow of the turbine. Measurements show that over a range of tip-speed ratios of 4–7.5, the power coefficient of a wind turbine with an incoming flow of 15-degrees inclination decreases on average by 7% relative to the power coefficient of a wind turbine with a non-inclined incoming flow. Flowfield measurements show that the wake of a turbine with an inclined incoming flow is deflected; the deflection angle is approximately 6-degrees for an incoming flow with 15-degrees inclination. The measured wake profiles are used as inflow profiles for a Blade Element Momentum code in order to quantify the impact of flow inclination on the performance of downstream wind turbines. In comparison to the case without inclination in the incoming flow, the combined power output of two aligned turbines with incoming inclined flow decreases by 1%, showing that flow inclination in complex terrain does not significantly reduce the energy production.