Large-eddy simulations of wind farm production and long distance wakes

The future development of offshore wind power will include many wind farms built in the same areas. It is known that wind farms produce long distance wakes, which means that we will see more occasions of farm to farm interaction, namely one wind farm operating in the wake of another wind farm. This study investigates how to perform accurate power predictions on large wind farms and how to assess the long distance wakes generated by these farms. The focus of this paper is the production's and wake's sensitivity to the extension of the grid as well as the turbulence when using Large-eddy simulations (LES) with pregenerated Mann turbulence. The aim is to determine an optimal grid which minimizes blockage effects and ensures constant resolution in the entire wake region at the lowest computational cost. The simulations are first performed in the absence of wind turbines in order to assess how the atmospheric turbulence and wind profile are evolving downstream (up to 12,000 m behind the position where the turbulence is imposed). In the second step, 10 turbines are added in the domain (using an actuator disc method) and their production is analyzed alongside the mean velocities in the domain. The blockage effects are tested using grids with different vertical extents. An equidistant region is used in order to ensure high resolution in the wake region. The importance of covering the entire wake structure inside the equidistant region is analyzed by decreasing the size of this region. In this step, the importance of the lateral size of the Mann turbulence box is also analyzed. In the results it can be seen that the flow is acceptably preserved through the empty domain if a larger turbulence box is used. The relative production is increased (due to blockage effects) for the last turbines using a smaller vertical domain, increased for a lower or narrower equidistant region (due to the smearing of the wake in the stretched area) and decreased when using a smaller turbulence box (due to decreased inmixing). The long distance wake behind the row is most impacted by the use of a smaller turbulence box, while the other simulation setups have less influence on these results. In summary, the results show the importance of having relatively large extensions of the domain, large extensions of the equidistant region and especially large extensions of the turbulence box.