To improve future wind plant performance and ultimately lower the cost of energy produced by wind, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories and NREL are conducting experiments in wake steering at the Scaled Wind Farm Technology (SWiFT) facility as part of the Energy Department’s Atmosphere to Electrons research initiative. Their goal is to determine whether yaw-based wake steering control strategies can improve the performance of a wind farm.
SpinnerLidar from the Technical University of Denmark, installed into the nacelle (the drivetrain enclosure) of one of the SWiFT site turbines, collects wake measurements and is capable of scanning the wake between 27 meters and 135 meters downstream. A sample of the processed lidar data, compiled over about 30 seconds and plotted in the graphic, shows a clear wake structure as it travels downstream from the turbine rotor (pictured from left to right in the plot). The blue areas indicate lower wind speed.
“A turbine wake represents a low-energy region of the wind flow, so when the wake reaches the next turbine, there is lower power production and uneven wind loads that can damage the turbine,” said Brian Naughton, principal investigator, Sandia. “This ultimately leads to higher cost of energy. If we can steer the wake out of the way of the next turbine, we can increase energy capture, reduce turbine loads, and thereby provide a lower cost of wind energy.”
Over the next few months, synchronized data from the upstream meteorological tower, wind turbine, and lidar will be collected across different inflow and turbine conditions according to a planned test matrix. The data will then be statistically analyzed and compared to simulation results from computational models of the SWiFT site completed prior to the experiment. The ultimate goal is to show the benefit of active flow control of the wind resource to improve overall wind plant performance.
All of the data from the experiment is available publicly through the Atmosphere to Electrons Data Archive and Portal.