Articles | Volume 7, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-185-2022
© Author(s) 2022. 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-7-185-2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Field measurements of wake meandering at a utility-scale wind turbine with nacelle-mounted Doppler lidars
Wind Engineering and Renewable Energy Laboratory (WiRE), École Polytechnique Fedérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Corey Markfort
IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
Fernando Porté-Agel
Wind Engineering and Renewable Energy Laboratory (WiRE), École Polytechnique Fedérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
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The dynamic wake meandering model (DWMM) assumes that wind turbine wakes are transported like a passive tracer by the large-scale turbulence of the atmospheric boundary layer. We show that both the downstream transport and the lateral transport of the wake have differences from the passive tracer assumption. We then propose to include the turbulent Schmidt number into the DWMM to account for the less efficient transport of momentum and show that it improves the quality of the model predictions.
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Short summary
Wind turbines create a wake of reduced wind speeds downstream of the rotor. The wake does not necessarily have a straight, pencil-like shape but can meander similar to a smoke plume. We investigated this wake meandering and observed that the downstream transport velocity is slower than the wind speed contrary to previous assumptions and that the evolution of the atmospheric turbulence over time impacts wake meandering on distances typical for the turbine spacing in wind farms.
Wind turbines create a wake of reduced wind speeds downstream of the rotor. The wake does not...
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