Predicting wake meandering in real-time through instantaneous measurements of wind turbine load fluctuations

Abstract

The present study deals with the real-time estimation of the wind turbine wake meandering and the determination of the best indicators to measure in order to build a real-time wake meandering model. Results are obtained through experiments performed in an atmospheric boundary layer wind tunnel, where a specific set-up enables to measure simultaneously the incoming lateral velocity fluctuations, the lateral force fluctuations applied to the wind turbine model and to track in real-time the lateral position of its wake. It is an extension of a previous work about the determination of good candidates to build some real-time predictors of the wake meandering. The strong correlations between the incoming transverse velocity fluctuations, the lateral force fluctuations and the lateral position of the wake farther downstream are quantified, confirming that the large-scale turbulent eddies impact directly the wake meandering. Three different versions of a wake meandering predictor model are compared. It leads to the conclusion that the monitoring of the global force fluctuations applied to a wind turbine could be used to predict in real-time the meandering of the generated wake.