Does the wind turbine wake follow the topography? A multi-lidar study in complex terrain

Menke, Robert; Vasiljević, Nikola; Hansen, Kurt S.; Hahmann, Andrea N.; Mann, Jakob

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-3-681-2018

Articles | Volume 3, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-3-681-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Flow in complex terrain: the Perdigão campaigns (WES/ACP/AMT...

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-3-681-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 3, issue 2

Research article

|

10 Oct 2018

Research article |

| 10 Oct 2018

Does the wind turbine wake follow the topography? A multi-lidar study in complex terrain

Robert Menke, Nikola Vasiljević, Kurt S. Hansen, Andrea N. Hahmann, and Jakob Mann

Data sets

Perdigão-2015: multi-lidar flow mapping over the complex terrain site including the wind turbine inflow and wake measurements N. Vasiljevic, N. Angleou, R. Menke, G. Lea, J. Mann, M. Courtney, J. L. Palma, and J. C. Matos https://doi.org/10.11583/DTU.7098536

Short summary

This study investigates the behaviour of wind turbine wakes in complex terrain. Using six scanning lidars, we measured the wake of a single turbine at the Perdigão site in Portugal in 2015. Our findings show that wake propagation is highly dependent on the atmospheric stability, which is mostly ignored in flow simulation used for wind farm layout design. The wake is lifted up during unstable atmospheric conditions and follows the terrain downwards during stable conditions.