An annual energy production estimation methodology for onshore wind farms over complex terrain using a RANS model with actuator discs

FOLCH, ARNAU; AVILA, MATIAS; NAVARRO DIAZ, GONZALO P.

Journal of Physics: Conference Series

Institute of Physics Publishing

Año: 2018 vol. 1037

1742-6588

This work presents a new methodology for the interpolation and extrapolation of the wind power generated by each wind turbine in a wind farm at different wind speeds for a given wind direction, running only three RANS-CFD simulations, two with and one without wind turbines. The wind turbines are modeled as uniformly loaded actuator discs with an adaptation for wake interaction cases. Three RANS turbulence models are used, standard k-ϵ, k-ϵ-fP and the realizable k-ϵ model modified to account for Coriolis forces and with appropriate coefficients for the simulation of ABL flows. The turbulence models are validated against wake deficit and power output measurements from the wind turbine test site Wieringermeer. Then, the new methodology proposed to predict the wind turbine power is detailed and evaluated with simulation results and measurements for a large onshore wind farm, particularly for a strong wake interaction case. It is observed that the power predictions using the proposed strategy are in good agreement with the obtained from different wind velocity simulations and power measurements. The methodology is a useful tool for wind farm annual energy production estimation.