Why curved wind turbine rows are better than straight ones

Abstract

Wind turbine wake effects in wind farms not only reduce the wind farm power production but also influence the wind farm power dependency on wind direction. In this paper, the wake effects in wind farm layouts consisting of curved and straight wind turbine rows are studied using engineering wake models and a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes model. These models predict a similar annual energy production for both wind farm layouts, but show stronger wake losses in the aligned wind directions for a rectangular wind farm layout, while the wake losses for a curved wind farm layout are more spread out over a larger wind direction sector. An energy system level simulation predicts that the enhanced spreading of wake losses over wind directions results in less hourly variability in energy generation on a Danish energy system level. Thus, our results show that a curved wind farm layout is more favorable compared to a wind farm layout with straight rows.