Mesoscale simulations of a real onshore wind power base in complex terrain: Wind farm wake behavior and power production

Sustainable development of wind power is challenging due to the difficulty in detecting farm-to-farm wake. In this work, the wind farm wake and power production of Zhangbei wind power base under various wind and topography are studied using the mesoscale weather research and forecasting model coupled with a wind farm parameterization. The results show that the farm wake is closely related to wind and topography. The maximum wind deficit that occurs in the medium prevailing wind at isolated and mountainous regions are 2.5 m/s and 0.5 m/s, respectively. The farm wake recovers downstream 20–35 km or more in isolated wind farms and about 6 km or less in mountainous wind farms, which can be neglected vertically higher than twice and fourfold diameters above the hub height. Moreover, the wind farms fully utilize the terrain acceleration outperform those located in the lower areas at the windward of the hill. The uncoordinated wind farm region with the minimum average normalized power of 0.47 is detected, which is attributed to the dense layout and no reasonable buffer zone along with the prevailing wind. It is imperative to perceive these and provide potential solutions to promote the sustainable development of wind power.