Articles | Volume 10, issue 6
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-1101-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-10-1101-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Swell impacts on an offshore wind farm in stable boundary layer: wake flow and energy budget analysis
Geophysical Institute, Bergen Offshore Wind Centre, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Mostafa Bakhoday-Paskyabi
Geophysical Institute, Bergen Offshore Wind Centre, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
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This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Geoscientific Model Development (GMD).
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Ocean waves shape winds close to the surface and extend their impact throughout the atmospheric boundary layer. In this study, we built a new modeling tool that allows simulations to follow the moving wave surface itself. By testing different wave and wind conditions, we show how waves change air motion, turbulence, and energy exchange above the ocean. This approach improves our ability to represent air–sea interactions, with implications for weather studies and offshore wind energy.
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Ocean waves shape winds close to the surface and extend their impact throughout the atmospheric boundary layer. In this study, we built a new modeling tool that allows simulations to follow the moving wave surface itself. By testing different wave and wind conditions, we show how waves change air motion, turbulence, and energy exchange above the ocean. This approach improves our ability to represent air–sea interactions, with implications for weather studies and offshore wind energy.
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The exchange of momentum and energy between the atmosphere and ocean depends on air–sea processes, especially wave-related ones. Precision in representing these interactions is vital for offshore wind turbine and farm design and operation. The development of a reliable wave–turbulence decomposition method to remove wave-induced interference from single-height wind measurements is essential for these applications and enhances our grasp of wind coherence within the wave boundary layer.
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We developed a new wind turbine wake model, the Simple Actuator Disc for Large Eddy Simulation (SADLES), integrated with the widely used Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. WRF-SADLES accurately simulates wind turbine wakes at resolutions of a few dozen meters, aligning well with idealized simulations and observational measurements. This makes WRF-SADLES a promising tool for wind energy research, offering a balance between accuracy, computational efficiency, and ease of implementation.
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Revised manuscript not accepted
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Wind turbine wake studies often rely on engineering models, which consist of simple analytical expressions. We review an atmospheric event resulting in a strong wind flow change within tens of minutes and apply several wake models to see how they respond to new conditions. We find that two models are consistent with their predictions, and one of them, the super-Gaussian model, predicts the wake shape particularly well; more attention should be paid to its development and implementation.
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Local refinement of the grid is a powerful method allowing us to reduce the computational time while preserving the accuracy in the area of interest. Depending on the implementation, the local refinement may introduce unwanted numerical effects into the results. We study the wind speed common to the wind turbine operational speeds and confirm strong alteration of the result when the heat fluxes are present, except for the specific refinement scheme used.
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We described a new automated method to separate the wind turbine wake from the undisturbed flow. The method relies on the wind speed distribution in the measured wind field to select one specific threshold value and split the measurements into wake and background points. The purpose of the method is to reduce the amount of data required – the proposed algorithm does not need precise information on the wind speed or direction and can run on the image instead of the measured data.
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Short summary
Waves interact with the overlying wind field by modifying the stresses at the atmosphere–ocean interface. We develop and employ a parameterization method of wave-induced stresses in the numerical simulation of an offshore wind farm in a stable atmospheric boundary layer. This work demonstrates how swells change the kinetic energy transport and induce wind veer and wake deflection, leading to significant variations in the power output of wind turbines at different positions of the wind farm.
Waves interact with the overlying wind field by modifying the stresses at the atmosphere–ocean...
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