Implementation and Analyses of Yaw Based Coordinated Control of Wind Farms

Tanvir Ahmad,Olivier Coupiac,Muneeb Ahsan,Nicolas Girard,Behzad Kazemtabrizi,Peter Matthews,Abdul Basit

doi:10.3390/en12071266

Abstract

This paper presents, with a live field experiment, the potential of increasing wind farm power generation by optimally yawing upstream wind turbine for reducing wake effects as a part of the SmartEOLE project. Two 2MW turbines from the Le Sole de Moulin Vieux (SMV) wind farm are used for this purpose. The upstream turbine (SMV6) is operated with a yaw offset ( α ) in a range of − 12 ° to 8° for analysing the impact on the downstream turbine (SMV5). Simulations are performed with intelligent control strategies for estimating optimum α settings. Simulations show that optimal α can increase net production of the two turbines by more than 5%. The impact of α on SMV6 is quantified using the data obtained during the experiment. A comparison of the data obtained during the experiment is carried out with data obtained during normal operations in similar wind conditions. This comparison show that an optimum or near-optimum α increases net production by more than 5% in wake affected wind conditions, which is in confirmation with the simulated results.

Highlights

When turbines are installed together in wind farms, they interact aerodynamically through wake effects or wakes
The wind direction sector 180◦ –220◦ is selected for analyses based on the predominant wind direction and wake effects of SMV6 on SMV5
As per WindPRO software calculations, wake losses can be as high as 26% annually in this sector in SMV5 production due to wakes produced by SMV6 only

Summary

Introduction

When turbines are installed together in wind farms, they interact aerodynamically through wake effects or wakes. With the conventional greedy control, each turbine maximises its own production as much as possible in the given wind conditions. In such control setup, the upstream turbines ignore the negative wake effects on the downstream turbines. Swept areas are intersected by the wakes produced by the upstream turbines, they will have lesser wind speeds to produce with. This can significantly affect productions of the downstream turbines, depending upon the wind and wake conditions. Decreasing wake effects in a wind farm can result in increased economic performance

Methods

Results

Conclusion