Abstract
The current trend of increasing the electricity production from wind energy has led to the installation of wind farms in areas of greater orographic complexity, raising doubts on the use of simple, linear, mathematical models of the fluid flow equations, so common in the wind energy engineering. The present study shows how conventional techniques, linear models and cup anemometers, can be combined with flow simulation by computational fluid dynamics techniques (nonlinear models) and measurements by sonic anemometers, and discuss their relative merits in the characterisation of the wind over a coastal region—a cliff over the sea. The computational fluid dynamic techniques were particularly useful, providing a global view of the wind flow over the cliff and enabling the identification of separated flow regions, clearly unsuitable for installation of wind turbines. These locations display a pulsating flow, with periods between 1 and 7min, in agreement with sonic anemometer measurements, and both a turbulence intensity and a gust factor well above the wind turbine design conditions.
Highlights
The methodology of wind resource assessment and turbine micro-siting (e.g. Troen and Petersen, 1989; NREL, 1997) has relied on a combination of field data, obtained mainly by cup anemometers and wind vanes, and software tools based on statistics and linear models of the fluid flow equations (e.g. Jackson and Hunt, 1975; Mason and Sykes, 1979)
More recent applications can be found in Maurizi et al (1998) and Castro et al (2003), where it is concluded that the computer simulation of wind flows should be based on time-dependent formulation, because local orography may induce flow unsteadiness, which will be removed in case of steady state formulation
The wind flow over a coastal region—a cliff over the sea—was studied by a wide variety of techniques including field measurements with cup and sonic anemometer, and computer simulations using linear and nonlinear (CFD) mathematical models of the fluid flow equations
Summary
The methodology of wind resource assessment and turbine micro-siting (e.g. Troen and Petersen, 1989; NREL, 1997) has relied on a combination of field data, obtained mainly by cup anemometers and wind vanes, and software tools based on statistics and linear models of the fluid flow equations (e.g. Jackson and Hunt, 1975; Mason and Sykes, 1979). Troen and Petersen, 1989; NREL, 1997) has relied on a combination of field data, obtained mainly by cup anemometers and wind vanes, and software tools based on statistics and linear models of the fluid flow equations (e.g. Jackson and Hunt, 1975; Mason and Sykes, 1979) This practise has proved its suitability in case of relatively flat terrain, being able to resolve both the upwind and the flow at the summit of isolated hills of moderate slope Wind parks tend to be installed in terrains of increasingly complexity, where flow separation, high vertical velocity and unsteadiness can be important aspects of locally prevailing wind regimes These are situations where linear models are not appropriate and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), nonlinear models, can be most useful, entering all stages of wind energy engineering, from siting of meteorological masts to wind resource quantification and turbine micro-siting.
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