Abstract
The wind power plant-wide control strategy known as wake steering involves the misalignment of upstream turbines with the wind direction to deflect wakes away from downstream turbines, increasing net wind plant power production. In this paper, we evaluate the potential of wake steering for U.S. land-based wind power plants. First, we outline a method for simulating and optimizing wake steering control for existing wind plants by combining the flow redirection and induction in steady state wake steering engineering model with the U.S. Wind Turbine Database and Wind Integration National Dataset Toolkit wind resource dataset. Next, to better understand the potential benefits of wake steering beyond those for existing wind plants, we evaluate the relative impacts of turbine specific power, turbine spacing, and mean wind speed on energy gain and levelized cost of energy (LCOE) using a model land-based wind power plant. For a subset of 60 existing wind plants, assuming a constant turbulence intensity of 8%, wake steering was found to yield an average annual energy production (AEP) gain of 0.80%, equivalent to recovering 13.85% of baseline wake losses. Further, we present a linear approximation between baseline wake losses and AEP gains that can be used to estimate wake steering gains for other wind power plants. Highlighting additional benefits of wake steering, for the model wind power plant we found that energy gains from wake steering enabled an approximate 30% reduction in turbine spacing while keeping LCOE constant.
Highlights
Wake steering is a plant-wide control strategy that maximizes total power production of the wind power plant by coordinating the interactions among turbines.[1]
Highlighting additional benefits of wake steering, for the model wind power plant we found that energy gains from wake steering enabled an approximate 30% reduction in turbine spacing while keeping levelized cost of energy (LCOE) constant
In addition to running yaw optimizations for existing wind power plants, we conduct a parametric study to investigate the relative effects of turbine spacing, wind turbine specific power (SP), and average wind speed on wake steering performance over parameter ranges relevant to land-based wind plants
Summary
Wake steering is a plant-wide control strategy that maximizes total power production of the wind power plant by coordinating the interactions among turbines.[1]. To model wake interactions within a wind power plant, computational fluid dynamics models are often used and validated using wind tunnel experiments and field campaigns; low-fidelity wake modeling tools are necessary for evaluating the benefits of wake steering because they can be used to perform controller optimizations and estimate energy production for an entire wind power plant One such tool set is the FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady State (FLORIS) code developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Delft University of Technology.[3]. In addition to running yaw optimizations for existing wind power plants, we conduct a parametric study to investigate the relative effects of turbine spacing, wind turbine specific power (SP), and average wind speed on wake steering performance over parameter ranges relevant to land-based wind plants. V concludes the paper, highlighting the key results and limitations of the investigation along with suggestions for future work
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