An analytical modeling study on yaw-based wake redirection control for large-scale offshore wind farm annual energy power improvement

Abstract

Active yaw control (AYC) can effectively improve offshore wind farm power generation performance. This work aims to study the sensitivity of full wind conditions and different yaw offset threshold settings to active yaw control for wake redirection, power generation efficiency, and annual energy production at a large-scale wind farm in Hangzhou Bay in Zhejiang Province, China. The results demonstrated that the optimization of AYC largely depends on the wind direction, which determines the wake strength of the wind farm. In the medium-speed environment, AYC is not sensitive to the wind speed variation and a similar yaw angle can be implemented on the wind turbines in these conditions. Moreover, the performance of AYC under different yaw offset threshold settings is approximately the same at low and high wind speeds and the optimal yaw offset threshold is about ±25° for all turbines. Compared with the aligned condition, AYC can achieve a contribution rate of more than 15% for a total power increase at medium wind speed and eventually gains an annual energy production of 0.32%, which will promote the efficient development and utilization of offshore wind power.