Numerical Investigation of the Influence of the Wake of Wind Turbines with Different Scales Based on OpenFOAM

Abstract

The wake of a wind turbine has an important influence on the output power of wind farms. Staggered height layout is an emerging method for the layout optimization of wind farms. In order to study the effect of a staggered height layout on the overall power output of wind farms in depth, we established a combination of two large wind turbines and three small wind turbines arranged laterally between the two large wind turbines, and set four working conditions with different distances between the small wind turbines and the downstream large wind turbines as the research objects. The wind turbine array is analyzed by numerical simulation The layouts add three small wind turbines between the two large wind turbines, and each row of small wind turbines has a different distance from the downstream large wind turbines. The results show that as the distance from the upstream large wind turbine increases, the power of the three small wind turbines on the downstream wind turbine tends to be positive. The numerical simulation suggests that under the inflow wind speed, the closer to the downstream large wind turbine, the higher the wind speed is at the hub height.