Wind energy

TOPFARM: modelling wind turbine wakes with ADMS 4

EU sponsored project to design and demonstrate a Next generation design tool for optimisation of wind farm topology and operation. The project is particularly concerned with large wind farms, either onshore or offshore, where turbines in the interior are affected by the wakes from upwind turbines in the following ways:

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• reduction in turbine inflow wind speed, causing lower energy production;
• increased turbulence in inflow, causing increased loading and therefore increased fatigue

CERC's role is to develop ADMS 4 to model the wind speed deficit in the wake of a turbine wake as a meandering turbulent plume, and to use ADMS 4's fluctuations model to analyse the turbulent fluctuations generated by the wake meandering, including the interaction between wakes. The ultimate aim is for ADMS 4 to be capable of modelling an entire wind farm, with upwind wakes affecting the source characterisation and dispersion of downwind wakes, and the only required data are the turbine locations, height and diameter, aerodynamic characteristics and meteorological conditions.