This is a past event
Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) are increasingly being deployed in large wind farms, the largest being in many cases offshore. This seminar will discuss the aerodynamic modelling of wind flow through large wind farms and how turbine operation may be controlled in order to maximise energy capture while minimising fatigue damage and hence maintenance requirements. Specific problems include the need for accurate modelling of the propagation of wind turbine wakes, usually by Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and Large Eddy Simulation (LES) methods, and of the wake impact on other turbines further downwind in an array. How quickly these wakes are mixed with the surrounding wind determines how far they propagate with significant intensity and hence both their potential for damaging impact and power ‘shadowing’ effects within wind farms. Wake mixing is in turn affected by the state of the wind in the approaching atmospheric boundary-layer (ABL), whether it is thermally neutral, stable or unstable. Availability of full scale data for model validation as well as possibilities for optimum control of wind farms as a whole and of individual turbines at the blade level will also be discussed.