WINDPOWER Conference & Exhibition 2019

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e-POSTER: A CFD Mesoscale Model for Wind Farms

21 May 19
2:00 PM - 2:25 PM

Tracks: Poster Presentations, Resource Assessment

Mesoscale models (or limited area models) can be used in forecasting mode to produce short-term predictions of the weather. The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) is a real-time 3km resolution hourly updated atmospheric model. The model utilizes radar data assimilated every 15 minutes over one hour period adding further details to the one provided by 13km hourly assimilation radar enhanced Rapid Refresh (RAP). The Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) modeling for wind farms is important to determine the effect of site conditions in a short or medium term, and analyzing the effect of wake interaction. The variation of the horizontal wind speed with height above the ground is called the vertical wind shear. In wind engineering, the determination of vertical wind shear is an important design parameter because it directly determines the productivity of a wind turbine on a certain height, and it can strongly influence the lifetime of turbine blades. The objective of this work is to analyze how ABL conditions can influence wind turbine wake characteristics such as velocity decay and turbulence intensity. In order to do that, the wake of a wind turbine was modeled using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) taking into account ABL effects such as vertical velocity gradients (wind shear) and velocity fluctuations. Simulations were performed considering atmospheric neutral stability conditions and meteorological data for a summer day with extremely unstable conditions.