FAST.Farm User’s Guide and Theory Manual

FAST.Farm is a midfidelity multiphysics engineering tool for predicting the power performance and structural loads of wind turbines within a wind farm. FAST.Farm uses OpenFAST to solve the aero-hydro-servo-elastic dynamics of each individual turbine, but considers additional physics for wind farm-wide ambient wind in the atmospheric boundary layer; a wind-farm super controller; and wake deficits, advection, deflection, meandering, and merging. FAST.Farm is based on some of the principles of the Dynamic Wake Meandering (DWM) model---including passive tracer modeling of wake meandering---but addresses many of the limitations of previous DWM implementations. FAST.Farm maintains low computational cost to support the often highly iterative and probabilistic design process. Applications of FAST.Farm include reducing wind farm under-performance and loads uncertainty, developing wind farm controls to enhance operation, optimizing wind farm siting and topology, and innovating the design of wind turbines for the wind-farm environment. The existing implementation of FAST.Farm also forms a solid foundation for further development of wind farm dynamics modeling as wind farm physics knowledge grows from future computations and experiments. This document provides guidance on how to use FAST.Farm, including input files, output files, modeling guidance, theory, and future work.