An adaptation of the super-Gaussian wake model for yawed wind turbines

Abstract

The wake of a yawed wind turbine tends to be deflected and does not follow the incoming wind direction. This phenomenon, often referred to as "wake deflection", has recently received a lot of attention from the wind energy research community: it is possible to dynamically optimize a wind farm power production by yawing some turbines to deflect their wakes, thus minimizing wake losses over the whole wind farm. In the present work, an analytical model for estimating the deflection of a yawed wind turbine wake is proposed. This new model is based on a super-Gaussian shape assumption for the velocity profile, enabling the estimation of the wake deflection in both near and far wake regions. First, the super-Gaussian model will be briefly introduced. Then, the new wake deflection model will be presented, as well as an updated version of the well known Jimenez model. This revised model allows a proper comparison with the proposed super-Gaussian model, since it is based on a similar definition of the wake width. Finally, results will be compared with experimental data from the literature.