IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v6y2013i5p2338-2361d25365.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Free-Atmosphere Stratification on Boundary-Layer Flow and Power Output from Very Large Wind Farms

Author

Listed:
  • Mahdi Abkar

    (Wind Engineering and Renewable Energy Laboratory (WIRE), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), EPFL-ENAC-IIE-WIRE, Lausanne CH-1015, Switzerland)

  • Fernando Porté-Agel

    (Wind Engineering and Renewable Energy Laboratory (WIRE), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), EPFL-ENAC-IIE-WIRE, Lausanne CH-1015, Switzerland)

Abstract

Large-eddy simulation is used to study the influence of free-atmosphere stratification on the structure of atmospheric boundary-layer flow inside and above very large wind farms, as well as the power extracted by the wind turbines. In the simulations, tuning-free Lagrangian scale-dependent dynamic models are used to model the subgrid-scale turbulent fluxes, while the turbine-induced forces are parameterized with an actuator-disk model. It is shown that for a given surface cover (with and without turbines) thermal stratification of the free atmosphere reduces the entrainment from the flow above compared with the unstratified case, leading to lower boundary-layer depth. Due to the fact that in very large wind farms vertical energy transport associated with turbulence is the only source of kinetic energy, lower entrainment leads to lower power production by the wind turbines. In particular, for the wind-turbine arrangements considered in the present work, the power output from the wind farms is reduced by about 35% when the potential temperature lapse rate in the free atmosphere increases from 1 to 10 K/km (within the range of values typically observed in the atmosphere). Moreover, it is shown that the presence of the turbines has significant effect on the growth of the boundary layer. Inspired by the obtained results, a simple one-dimensional model is developed to account for the effect of free-atmosphere stability on the mean flow and the power output from very large wind farms.

Suggested Citation

  • Mahdi Abkar & Fernando Porté-Agel, 2013. "The Effect of Free-Atmosphere Stratification on Boundary-Layer Flow and Power Output from Very Large Wind Farms," Energies, MDPI, vol. 6(5), pages 1-24, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:6:y:2013:i:5:p:2338-2361:d:25365
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/6/5/2338/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/6/5/2338/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mahdi Abkar & Jens Nørkær Sørensen & Fernando Porté-Agel, 2018. "An Analytical Model for the Effect of Vertical Wind Veer on Wind Turbine Wakes," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-10, July.
    2. Barlas, Emre & Wu, Ka Ling & Zhu, Wei Jun & Porté-Agel, Fernando & Shen, Wen Zhong, 2018. "Variability of wind turbine noise over a diurnal cycle," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 791-800.
    3. Rafael V. Rodrigues & Corinne Lengsfeld, 2019. "Development of a Computational System to Improve Wind Farm Layout, Part II: Wind Turbine Wakes Interaction," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-27, April.
    4. Amin Niayifar & Fernando Porté-Agel, 2016. "Analytical Modeling of Wind Farms: A New Approach for Power Prediction," Energies, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-13, September.
    5. Tristan Revaz & Fernando Porté-Agel, 2021. "Large-Eddy Simulation of Wind Turbine Flows: A New Evaluation of Actuator Disk Models," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-22, June.
    6. Deepu Dilip & Fernando Porté-Agel, 2017. "Wind Turbine Wake Mitigation through Blade Pitch Offset," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-17, May.
    7. Kevin A. Adkins & Adrian Sescu, 2022. "Wind Farms and Humidity," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-15, April.
    8. Abkar, Mahdi & Porté-Agel, Fernando, 2014. "Mean and turbulent kinetic energy budgets inside and above very large wind farms under conventionally-neutral condition," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 142-152.
    9. Ka Ling Wu & Fernando Porté-Agel, 2017. "Flow Adjustment Inside and Around Large Finite-Size Wind Farms," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-23, December.
    10. Susumu Takakuwa & Takanori Uchida, 2022. "Improvement of Airflow Simulation by Refining the Inflow Wind Direction and Applying Atmospheric Stability for Onshore and Offshore Wind Farms Affected by Topography," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-27, July.
    11. Meyer Forsting, Alexander R. & Navarro Diaz, Gonzalo P. & Segalini, Antonio & Andersen, Søren J. & Ivanell, Stefan, 2023. "On the accuracy of predicting wind-farm blockage," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 114-129.
    12. Jacob R. West & Sanjiva K. Lele, 2020. "Wind Turbine Performance in Very Large Wind Farms: Betz Analysis Revisited," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-25, March.
    13. Jay P. Goit & Wim Munters & Johan Meyers, 2016. "Optimal Coordinated Control of Power Extraction in LES of a Wind Farm with Entrance Effects," Energies, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-20, January.
    14. Jens Nørkær Sørensen & Gunner Christian Larsen, 2021. "A Minimalistic Prediction Model to Determine Energy Production and Costs of Offshore Wind Farms," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-27, January.
    15. Takanori Uchida & Susumu Takakuwa, 2020. "Numerical Investigation of Stable Stratification Effects on Wind Resource Assessment in Complex Terrain," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-32, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:6:y:2013:i:5:p:2338-2361:d:25365. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.