Evaluating wind farm wakes in large eddy simulations and engineering models

Abstract

We study wind farm wakes with large eddy simulations (LES) and use these results for the evaluation of engineering models such as the Jensen model, the coupled wake boundary layer model (CWBL), the Turbulence Optimized Park model (TurbOPark), and the wind farm model developed by Niayifar and Porté-Agel (Energies 9, 741 (2016)). We study how well these models capture the wake effects between two aligned wind farms with 72 turbines separated by 10 kilometers in a neutral boundary layer. We find that all considered models over-predict the wind farm wake recovery compared to what is observed in LES. The TurbOPark model predictions on the wind farm wake effect are closest to the LES results for the scenario considered here.