Publications Details

AWAKEN Wind Plant Simulation Comparison

Cheung, Lawrence; Hsieh, Alan S.K.; Blaylock, Myra L.; Herges, Thomas; Bays, Nathan R.; Brown, Kenneth A.; Sakievich, Philip; Houck, Daniel R.; Maniaci, David C.; Kaul, Colleen; Rai, Raj; Hamilton, Nicholas; Rybchuk, Alex; Scott, Ryan; Thedin, Regis; Radunz, William

A series of numerical simulations of wind farms, using different model fidelities and for different atmospheric stability conditions, were performed as a part of the American WAKE ExperimeNt. The simulations included using FLORIS wake models, a number of microscale AMR-Wind and Nalu-Wind runs, as well as idealized and complex terrain WRF runs. The largest computations used the AMR-Wind LES solver to simulate a 100 km x 100 km domain containing 541 turbines under unstable atmospheric conditions matching previous measurements, while other LES computations focused on sections of the King Plains wind farm. Results of this qualitative comparison illustrate the interactions with wind farms with large-scale ABL structures in the flow, as well as the extent of downstream wake penetration in the flow and blockage effects around wind farms.