Development of a time-domain simulation tool for offshore wind farms

Abstract

A time-domain simulation tool to predict the dynamic power output of wind turbines in an offshore wind farm was developed in this study. A wind turbine model consisting of first or second order transfer functions of various wind turbine elements was combined with the Ainslie’s eddy viscosity wake model to construct the simulation tool. The wind turbine model also includes an aerodynamic model that is a look up table of power and thrust coefficients with respect to the tip speed ratio and pitch angle of the wind turbine obtained by a commercial multi-body dynamics simulation tool. The wake model includes algorithms of superposition of multiple wakes and propagation based on Taylor’s frozen turbulence assumption. Torque and pitch control algorithms were implemented in the simulation tool to perform max-Cp and power regulation control of the wind turbines. The simulation tool calculates wind speeds in the two-dimensional domain of the wind farm at the hub height of the wind turbines and yields power outputs from individual wind turbines. The NREL 5MW reference wind turbine was targeted as a wind turbine to obtain parameters for the simulation. To validate the simulation tool, a Danish offshore wind farm with 80 wind turbines was modelled and used to predict the power from the wind farm. A comparison of the prediction with the measured values available in literature showed that the results from the simulation program were fairly close to the measured results in literature except when the wind turbines are congruent with the wind direction.