FLOW Estimation and Rose Superposition (FLOWERS): an integral approach to engineering wake models

LoCascio, Michael J.; Bay, Christopher J.; Bastankhah, Majid; Barter, Garrett E.; Fleming, Paul A.; Martínez-Tossas, Luis A.

Abstract

Annual energy production (AEP) is often the objective function in wind plant layout optimization studies. The conventional method to compute AEP for a wind farm is to first evaluate power production for each discrete wind direction and speed using either computational fluid dynamics simulations or engineering wake models. The AEP is then calculated by weighted-averaging (based on the wind rose at the wind farm site) the power produced across all wind directions and speeds. We propose a novel formulation for time-averaged wake velocity that incorporates an analytical integral of a wake deficit model across every wind direction. This approach computes the average flow field more efficiently, and layout optimization is an obvious application to exploit this benefit. The clear advantage of this new approach is that the layout optimization produces solutions with comparable AEP performance yet is completed 2 orders of magnitude faster. The analytical integral and the use of a Fourier expansion to express the wind speed and wind direction frequency create a relatively smooth solution space for the gradient-based optimizer to excel in comparison to the existing weighted-averaging power calculation.

Citation

LoCascio, M. J., Bay, C. J., Bastankhah, M., Barter, G. E., Fleming, P. A., & Martínez-Tossas, L. A. (2022). FLOW Estimation and Rose Superposition (FLOWERS): an integral approach to engineering wake models. Wind Energy Science, 7(3), 1137-1151. https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1137-2022

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 2, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jun 1, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Jul 14, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 14, 2022
• Journal: Wind Energy Science
• Print ISSN: 2366-7443
• Electronic ISSN: 2366-7451
• Publisher: Copernicus Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 1137-1151
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-1137-2022
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1200411