Articles | Volume 9, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-9-219-2024
© Author(s) 2024. 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-9-219-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
24 Jan 2024
Research article |
| 24 Jan 2024
| 24 Jan 2024
The value of wake steering wind farm flow control in US energy markets
National Wind Technology Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA
Dev Millstein
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Seongeun Jeong
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Paul Fleming
National Wind Technology Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA
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A wind turbine can actively influence its wake by turning the rotor out of the wind direction to deflect the wake away from a downstream wind turbine. This technique was tested in a field experiment at a wind farm, where the inflow and wake were monitored with remote-sensing instruments for the wind speed. The behaviour of the wake deflection agrees with the predictions of two analytical models, and a bias of the wind direction perceived by the yawed wind turbine led to suboptimal power gains.
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Matthew S. Johnson, Sofia D. Hamilton, Seongeun Jeong, Yu Yan Cui, Dien Wu, Alex Turner, and Marc Fischer
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(co-design).
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Paul Fleming, Michael Sinner, Tom Young, Marine Lannic, Jennifer King, Eric Simley, and Bart Doekemeijer
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The paper presents a new validation campaign of wake steering at a commercial wind farm. The campaign uses fixed yaw offset positions, rather than a table of optimal yaw offsets dependent on wind direction, to enable comparison with engineering models of wake steering. Additionally, by applying the same offset in beneficial and detrimental conditions, we are able to collect important data for assessing second-order wake model predictions.
Liang Dong, Wai Hou Lio, and Eric Simley
Wind Energ. Sci., 6, 1491–1500, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-1491-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-1491-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
This paper suggests that the impacts of different turbulence models should be considered as uncertainties while evaluating the benefits of lidar-assisted control (LAC) in wind turbine design. The value creation of LAC, evaluated using the Kaimal turbulence model, will be diminished if the Mann turbulence model is used instead. In particular, the difference in coherence is more significant for larger rotors.
Eric Simley, Paul Fleming, Nicolas Girard, Lucas Alloin, Emma Godefroy, and Thomas Duc
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Short summary
Short summary
Wake steering is a wind farm control strategy in which upstream wind turbines are misaligned with the wind to deflect their low-velocity wakes away from downstream turbines, increasing overall power production. Here, we present results from a two-turbine wake-steering experiment at a commercial wind plant. By analyzing the wind speed dependence of wake steering, we find that the energy gained tends to increase for higher wind speeds because of both the wind conditions and turbine operation.
Alayna Farrell, Jennifer King, Caroline Draxl, Rafael Mudafort, Nicholas Hamilton, Christopher J. Bay, Paul Fleming, and Eric Simley
Wind Energ. Sci., 6, 737–758, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-737-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-737-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Most current wind turbine wake models struggle to accurately simulate spatially variant wind conditions at a low computational cost. In this paper, we present an adaptation of NREL's FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady State (FLORIS) wake model, which calculates wake losses in a heterogeneous flow field using local weather measurement inputs. Two validation studies are presented where the adapted model consistently outperforms previous versions of FLORIS that simulated uniform flow only.
Jennifer King, Paul Fleming, Ryan King, Luis A. Martínez-Tossas, Christopher J. Bay, Rafael Mudafort, and Eric Simley
Wind Energ. Sci., 6, 701–714, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-701-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-701-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
This paper highlights the secondary effects of wake steering, including yaw-added wake recovery and secondary steering. These effects enhance the value of wake steering especially when applied to a large wind farm. This paper models these secondary effects using an analytical model proposed in the paper. The results of this model are compared with large-eddy simulations for several cases including 2-turbine, 3-turbine, 5-turbine, and 38-turbine cases.
Luis A. Martínez-Tossas, Jennifer King, Eliot Quon, Christopher J. Bay, Rafael Mudafort, Nicholas Hamilton, Michael F. Howland, and Paul A. Fleming
Wind Energ. Sci., 6, 555–570, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-555-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-6-555-2021, 2021
Short summary
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In this paper a three-dimensional steady-state solver for flow through a wind farm is developed and validated. The computational cost of the solver is on the order of seconds for large wind farms. The model is validated using high-fidelity simulations and SCADA.
Alison R. Marklein, Deanne Meyer, Marc L. Fischer, Seongeun Jeong, Talha Rafiq, Michelle Carr, and Francesca M. Hopkins
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 1151–1166, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1151-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1151-2021, 2021
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Dairy cow farms produce half of California's (CA) methane (CH4) emissions. Current CH4 emission inventories lack regional variation in management and are inadequate to assess CH4 mitigation measures. We develop a spatial database of CH4 emissions for CA dairy farms including farm-scale herd demographics and management data. This database is useful to predict CH4 emission reductions from mitigation efforts, to compare with atmospheric CH4 observations and to attribute emissions to specific farms.
Peter Brugger, Mithu Debnath, Andrew Scholbrock, Paul Fleming, Patrick Moriarty, Eric Simley, David Jager, Jason Roadman, Mark Murphy, Haohua Zong, and Fernando Porté-Agel
Wind Energ. Sci., 5, 1253–1272, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-1253-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-1253-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
A wind turbine can actively influence its wake by turning the rotor out of the wind direction to deflect the wake away from a downstream wind turbine. This technique was tested in a field experiment at a wind farm, where the inflow and wake were monitored with remote-sensing instruments for the wind speed. The behaviour of the wake deflection agrees with the predictions of two analytical models, and a bias of the wind direction perceived by the yawed wind turbine led to suboptimal power gains.
Patrick Murphy, Julie K. Lundquist, and Paul Fleming
Wind Energ. Sci., 5, 1169–1190, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-1169-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-5-1169-2020, 2020
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We present and evaluate an improved method for predicting wind turbine power production based on measurements of the wind speed and direction profile across the rotor disk for a wind turbine in complex terrain. By comparing predictions to actual power production from a utility-scale wind turbine, we show this method is more accurate than methods based on hub-height wind speed or surface-based atmospheric characterization.
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Short summary
Wake steering is a wind farm control technology in which turbines are misaligned with the wind to deflect their wakes away from downstream turbines, increasing total power production. In this paper, we use a wind farm control model and historical electricity prices to assess the potential increase in market value from wake steering for 15 US wind plants. For most plants, we find that the relative increase in revenue from wake steering exceeds the relative increase in energy production.
Wake steering is a wind farm control technology in which turbines are misaligned with the wind...
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