Verification and Validation of Wind Farm Flow Models

Abstract

Wind farm flow models allow for the analysis of wind power plant wake effects. There are several mathematical models available to describe this complex flow, and some of them are implemented across multiple code bases. This manuscript presents a framework for verification and validation of these models of different complexities. As part of this work, an API was developed to interface the different flow tools using the WindIO wind plant schema. Then, verification techniques are applied to the embedded tools as a test to make sure there are no mistakes in the codes, and across different flow models. This reveals similarities and differences in stochastic trends given realistic measurement uncertainty. Validation is performed using a database of large eddy simulations to quantify model agreement with high fidelity data and develop a predictor of what this implies for future simulations.