Optimal control to increase energy production of wind farm considering wake effect and lifetime estimation

Abstract

In a wind farm, the upstream wind turbine may cause power loss to the downstream wind turbines due to the wake effect. Meanwhile, the energy production is determined by the power generation and the lifetime of the wind turbine. In this paper, an optimal active power control method is proposed to maximize the energy production of wind farms by considering the wake effect and the lifetime of wind turbine. It starts with the analysis of the pitch angle curve and active power curve seen from the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) of individual wind turbines. Taking the wake effect into account, the pitch angle curve and active power curve are optimized with the aim of Maximum Power Generation (MPG) of the wind farm. Afterwards, considering the lifetime of wind turbines, a comparison is offered between the MPPT method and the MPG method for energy production using a simplified two-turbine wind farm as an example. Due to the small range of the effective wake area, it is found that the energy production is almost the same. Finally, the pitch angle curve and active power curve are optimized according to the Maximum Energy Production (MEP) of a wind farm. Upon considering and contrasting the MPPT method and the MEP method, it can be seen that the energy production of wind farms can be increased even in the case of there not being an effective wake area.