Large Eddy Simulation of the Layout Effects on Wind Farm Performance Coupling With Wind Turbine Control Strategies

Large eddy simulation (LES) coupling with wind turbine control strategies is newly developed to quantitatively study the layout effects on wind farm performance. The turbine rotor is parameterized with an actuator line method (ALM), and the five-region generator-torque control and the proportional-integral (PI) pitch control are newly introduced to regulate the operation of the wind turbine. First, a dynamic inflow boundary condition is designed to validate the current simulation framework. The validation results show that the simulated power curve agrees well with the real power curve of the wind turbine, and the maximum power error of the simulation only accounts for 5% of the rated power. Then, to study the layout effects, four kinds of wind farm arrangements are designed by varying the alignment method and the turbine spacing. The results show that the staggered arrangement and increasing the stream-wise spacing are beneficial to reduce the velocity deficit. The power comparison results show that the staggered arrangement has obvious advantages among the four cases, and it increases the capacity factor (CF) by 25% and improves the wind farm efficiency by about 50% compared with the aligned arrangement. The present simulation framework can be used to optimize the turbine layout for the potential wind farms.

Automated summary

This study uses large eddy simulation coupled with wind turbine control strategies to investigate the impact of layout on wind farm performance. The results show that staggered arrangement and increased spacing can reduce velocity deficit and improve wind farm efficiency.