The main aim of this study is to compare actual power production from an existing wind farm with power production prediction by WindSim, which is a CFD tool based on the nonlinear flow model. The wind farm that is being worked on is located in Northern Sweden and has high orographic complexity with forested hilly terrain.
There is 1 year record of met-mast wind measurements and nearly 2 years record of production data.Firstly roughness and height contours data are put as an input in order to simulate and generate wind fields over the complex terrain. In addition forest model is used to get more detailed roughness height.
After generating wind fields existing turbine locations and 1-year wind speed measurement are imported.The results show that how accurate are the CFD calculations to solve turbulence in a complex terrain. Comparison between actual production data with energy production results by simulations is the main approach of this thesis work to validate the simulations.
The results indicate that both WAsP and WindSim have overestimated energy production and wind speed as well. However particularly with WindSim forest module CFD calculations have more accurate results than without forest module and WAsP estimations.
Source: Gotland University
Author: Teneler, Görkem
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