Effects of axial induction control on wind farm energy production - A field test

Abstract

Recent years have seen an increased interest in literature in Active Wake Control (AWC) strategies, which aim to reduce wake losses in wind farms in order to increase the energy yield and/or decrease loading. This paper presents the results from field tests with one of the AWC strategies, called axial induction control, at a commercial wind farm. To this end, the pitch angle offset for the most upstream wind turbines were optimized for each wind direction to maximize the power capture of the whole farm. This optimization is performed using the wake model FarmFlow, a code based on parabolized Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). After calibration of the wind direction measurement and implementation of the optimized pitch settings, a measurement campaign of one year has been performed. The analysis of the measurements indicate that axial induction control results in increased energy production.