Global trends in the performance of large wind farms  based on high-fidelity simulations

Andersen, Søren Juhl; Breton, Simon-Philippe; Witha, Björn; Ivanell, Stefan; Sørensen, Jens Nørkær

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-1689-2020

Articles | Volume 5, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-1689-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-1689-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 5, issue 4

Research article

|

07 Dec 2020

Research article |

| 07 Dec 2020

Global trends in the performance of large wind farms based on high-fidelity simulations

Søren Juhl Andersen, Simon-Philippe Breton, Björn Witha, Stefan Ivanell, and Jens Nørkær Sørensen

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Final revised paper (published on 07 Dec 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 05 Feb 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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SC1: 'Wind speed probability distribution', Paul Pukite, 05 Feb 2020
RC1: 'Referee report', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 Feb 2020
RC2: 'Review of "Global Trends of Large Wind Farm Performance based on High Fidelity Simulations"', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Mar 2020
AC1: 'AR1', Søren Juhl Andersen, 09 Jun 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Søren Juhl Andersen on behalf of the Authors (09 Jun 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (25 Jun 2020) by Sandrine Aubrun

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (30 Jul 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have clearly answered the points raised by the referee and have improved the manuscript correspondingly. As indicated before I believe the work is an important contribution to the community. The work is suitable for the Wind Energy Science Journal and I believe the work should be published there. After reading the manuscript again I compiled the below list of suggestions / attention points, which I would like the authors to consider before the manuscript is published.

Specific comments
* Line 45. Important work on blockage is also done by Segalini and Dahlberg, Wind Energy, 23(2), 120-128 (2020).
* Line 47. Other reviews related to the present work include
Duckworth, Barthelmie, Wind Engineering 32(5), 459–475 (2008)
Stevens and Meneveau, Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 2017. 49:311–39
* Line 72 Continuous work by Andersen et al. (2015) ==> I am not sure what exactly is meant by continuous work. The preceding sentence discusses Andersen et al. (2016) so the order is confusing here
* Line 100: Specify the participating groups here
* Line 168: Double check "prescribed boundary layer"; the abbreviation PBL is generally used for planetary boundary layer, so perhaps consider not using the abbreviation.
* Table 1: Define the different participating institutions here
* Table 2: How is shear defined here / indicate units.
* line 213: The authors explained that they were not in the position to perform all simulations for the same turbulence intensity. That is fine. However, in line 213 the differences between the various cases should be specified for clarity.
* Line 256: Is this also the reason the numbers in figure 5 are lower than in figure 4?
* Section 4.2.1: It should perhaps be mentioned that the authors just consider 2 example models. Over the years various other models have already been developed.
* Figure 12: Does the clustering of sample points affect the obtained fit? I also asked this question before, but did not get a full answer on this. When this is not fully known perhaps just clarify this around line 380.

Technical corrections
* Please double check the manuscript for typos and use of single / plural, etc.
Line 15 wind farm(s)
Line 37 (and other places) Porte-Agel needs a accent on the e
Line 68 "of the 10 turbine row"
Line 71 "5th of 6th turbine" ==> specific that this concerns rows
Line 230-235: Consider combining the different paragraphs
Line 247 double dot at the end of the sentence
Line 294 IWBL model is not defined
Line 323 "turbulence(TI" ==> add space
Line 355 "rror(MSE)" ==> add space
Line 392 "textcolorredresources."

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (27 Aug 2020) by Sandrine Aubrun

AR by Søren Juhl Andersen on behalf of the Authors (21 Sep 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (06 Oct 2020) by Sandrine Aubrun

ED: Publish as is (13 Oct 2020) by Joachim Peinke (Chief editor)

AR by Søren Juhl Andersen on behalf of the Authors (19 Oct 2020) Manuscript

Short summary

The complexity of wind farm operation increases as the wind farms get larger and larger. Therefore, researchers from three universities have simulated numerous different large wind farms as part of an international benchmark. The study shows how simple engineering models can capture the general trends, but high-fidelity simulations are required in order to quantify the variability and uncertainty associated with power production of the wind farms and hence the potential profitability and risks.