A simulation study demonstrating the importance of large-scale trailing vortices in wake steering

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the role of flow structures generated in wind farm control through yaw misalignment. A pair of counter-rotating vortices is shown to be important in deforming the shape of the wake and in explaining the asymmetry of wake steering in oppositely signed yaw angles. We also demonstrate that vortices generated by an upstream turbine that is performing wake steering can deflect wakes of downstream turbines, even if they are themselves aligned. We encourage the development of improvements to control-oriented engineering models of wind farm control, to include the effects of these large-scale flow structures. Such a new model would improve the predictability of control-oriented models. Further, we demonstrate that the vortex structures created in wake steering can lead to greater impact on power generation than currently modeled in control-oriented models. We propose that wind farm controllers can be made more effective if designed to take advantage of these effects.