The Influence of Topographical Variations on Wind Turbine Wake Characteristics Using LES

Abstract

Abstract A detailed understanding of the characteristics of wind-turbine wakes over complex terrain is crucial for designing efficient wind farms. Complexity of the terrain can be due to changes in elevation (due to, e.g., hills/valley/cliffs), and changes in the surface roughness (due to land types, e.g. fallow/cultivated/forested). We employ large-eddy simulations to study the evolution of a wind-turbine wake sited at different locations on a gradual two-dimensional hill with and without an abrupt transition in its surface aerodynamic roughness. A turbine placed at the foot of the hill, midway between the foot and the peak, and at the hill peak behave very differently when compared against each other. For a homogeneously rough surface, the profile of the velocity deficit normalized by the inflow velocity at the hill peak height shows that the wake recovers fastest for a turbine placed at the midway location. For a heterogeneously rough surface, however, the wake recovery for a turbine at the midway location is not significantly faster than that for a turbine at the hill-foot. The surface heterogeneity accelerates the flow downstream, which affects the wake recovery, due to which the deficits over heterogeneously rough surfaces are typically larger than for homogeneous surfaces. The turbulence intensity as well as the turbulence intensity added due to the presence of the turbine are affected by the position of the turbine as well as the surface roughness heterogeneity. The observed differences between the rates of wake recovery are only partly explained by the pressure gradient of the background flow over the hill in the absence of the wind turbine. The pressure drop over a region from one diameter upstream to five diameters downstream of the turbine explains the wake recovery for the turbines sited on homogeneously rough surface but not on a heterogeneously rough surface.