Director, Wind Energy Assessment DNV Medford, Massachusetts
Presentation Description: Industry forecasts worldwide predict that offshore wind installations will continue to grow and form a significant contribution to the electricity generation mix over the next decade, with 30 GW expected in the U.S. by 2030.
This continued growth has led to areas of high-density offshore wind farm development or ‘clusters’ with increasingly larger turbines. This poses an interesting question regarding the impact of large clusters of turbines on downstream projects and how long these effects persist. Some recent industry research has been emerging which investigates the effect of cluster wakes on the operation of far downstream wind farms, with some studies suggesting wakes persist for up to 55 km in stable atmospheric conditions. Historically, extensive validation of wake models has always been a challenge offshore due to a lack of suitable datasets, and in particular, wake recovery components of wake models remain relatively under-validated. That is, until now!
In this talk, 4 new case studies will be presented and put into context of prior validation of offshore wake models based on high-resolution production datasets from more than eight projects in Europe. Early results indicate that applying default parameters in industry standard wake models tends to underestimate the external wake impact of far-distance projects. Comparisons and suggested updated wake model settings will be presented. We will also summarize implications to the U.S. offshore wind development.
Learning Objectives:
The primary result of the work is an improved understanding of the wake impact of distant projects on downstream offshore wind farms based on an extended envelope of high resolution production data, covering a range of project configurations and site conditions.
Through extending the envelope of validation datasets and looking at the impact on estimated AEP in particular, the industry will be in a position to improve confidence in wake model results. Anonymised results of the validation will also be presented, offering a statement of accuracy of a number of industry standard wake models considered in the exercise.
