Design of a Simple Wake Model for the Wind Farm Layout Optimization Considering the Wake Meandering Effect

Abstract

The design of the optimal layout of the wind farm is crucial to minimize the cost of energy produced by the wind farm. This requires an accurate wake model to simulate the wake effect on the annual energy yield of the wind farm. On the other hand, the wake model must be very simple in order to limit the duration of the layout optimisation process. The initial purpose of this Master thesis project is to develop an improved (simple) wake model for the wind farm layout optimisation considering the wake meandering effect. With this purpose, a dynamic wind farm wake model which incorporates the wake meandering motion in the time domain is first developed. Since the dynamic wind farm wake model is very computationally expensive, it is not suitable for the wind farm layout optimisation. However, it is discovered with the dynamic wind farm wake model that the wake meandering has insignificant effect on the annual energy yield of the wind farm. Hence, it is not meaningful to develop such simple wake model that considers the wake meandering effect on the wind farm annual energy yield. The thesis has an emphasis on the analysis of the wake meandering effect on the wind farm annual energy yield using the developed dynamic wind farm wake model. The results are shown and the conclusions are drawn. Besides, the limitations of this thesis project are addressed and recommendations for the future work in this area are posted.