What is it about?
Wind energy is one of the fastest growing renewable energy technologies. Using a scale-adaptive large eddy simulation (LES) method, we have simulated the a wind farm of 41 wind turbines with a rotor diameter of 126 meters. The results show that the spectrum of wind power fluctuations depends on the incoming turbulence and its modulation by the wake interactions in wind farms.
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Why is it important?
Our findings indicate that atmospheric turbulence maintains a statistically stationary power fluctuations that follow the well-known power law spectrum of atmospheric turbulence. This finding indicates that the performance of large wind farms may be enhanced by atmospheric turbulence initiated by mountains, forests, or similar obstacles.
Perspectives
While this article has discussed relatively abstract aspects of turbulence, it accounts for more applied research conducted by other experts. Vortices are engines of fluid turbulence. The article lays the idea of utilizing vortices for modeling atmospheric turbulence. This approach of turbulence modeling may be useful in other applications, where resources of flow measurement is limited but high-fidelity measurements are desired.
Jahrul Alam
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Interaction of vortex stretching with wind power fluctuations, Physics of Fluids, July 2022, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0099347.
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