Combining induction control and wake steering for wind farm energy and fatigue loads optimisation

Abstract

Turbine power and yaw set points can be adjusted across a wind farm to minimise the overall power losses and the additional fatigue loads caused by wake interactions. Detailed modelling is required to understand the complex flows in sufficient detail to allow a realistic practical control design. High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics requires enormous computational resources, so simpler engineering models are needed which capture the most important effects while running fast enough to allow sufficient testing. This paper describes a steady-state optimisation tool which has been extended to optimise all the power reduction set-points and yaw offsets simultaneously for different wind conditions. It also describes a fast time-domain simulation model which captures turbine and wake dynamic effects, so that wind farm controllers of all kinds can be tested in realistic and time-varying conditions. To demonstrate its application for controller testing, the performance of the combined power and yaw controller is tested during changing conditions of wind speed, direction and turbulence derived from measured site data. Finally, the need for validation is discussed, as many uncertainties still need to be resolved in order to obtain sufficient confidence that the potential benefits of such wind farm control schemes can be realised in practice.