Power regulation of upstream wind turbines for power increase in a wind farm

Abstract

A strategy to increase the power output from a wind farm by regulating the most upstream wind turbine to a lower power than its available power is investigated in this study. A similar concept but using a fixed pitch angle of the most upstream wind turbine available in the literature was extended to use power demands from a wind farm controller, and the effect of wind turbine spacing and the wind speed on the power increase were analyzed. From various simulations of a virtual wind farm consisting of ten 5MW wind turbines in series using a time-domain wind farm simulation tool, the optimal power demand from the wind farm controller to increase the total power output from the wind farm was investigated. When the wind turbine spacing is 4D, the increase in the total power output from the wind farm reached 4.1% when the partialization is about 0.825. It was found from the study that the optimal power demand varies with the wind turbine spacing. It was also found that for the same wind turbine spacing, the optimal power demand is about the same if the wind speed is below the rated wind speed and in the max-CP region. If the wind speed becomes higher and it is in the transition region or above the rated wind speed, the effect of the partialization to increase the total power decreased substantially.