Faster wind farm AEP calculations with CFD using a generalized wind turbine model

Abstract

Abstract Wind farm Annual Energy Production (AEP) calculations are required to design energy efficient wind farm layouts. We investigate methods that can reduce the computational effort of AEP calculations using Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations of an idealized atmospheric wind farm setup. In addition, we introduce a generalized wind turbine model that compares well with wind turbine aerodynamic data covering a large range of wind turbine sizes. We apply the general wind turbine model to reduce the computational effort of the AEP calculations by decreasing the number of independent wind speed flow cases. Furthermore, we apply Reynolds-number similarity to compute the wind speed flow cases faster and we show how wind farm layout mirror- and rotational-symmetry can reduce the number of independent wind direction flow cases.