Abstract
Turbine wakes reduce power production in a wind farm. Current wind farms are generally built with turbines that are all the same height, but if wind farms included turbines with different tower heights, the cost of energy (COE) may be reduced. We used gradient-based optimization to demonstrate a method to optimize wind farms with varied hub heights. Our study includes a modified version of the FLORIS wake model that accommodates three-dimensional wakes integrated with a tower structural model. Our purpose was to design a process to minimize the COE of a wind farm through layout optimization and varying turbine hub heights. Results indicate that when a farm is optimized for layout and height with two separate height groups, COE can be lowered by as much as 5%-9%, compared to a similar layout and height optimization where all the towers are the same. The COE has the best improvement in farms with high turbine density and a low wind shear exponent.
Original language | American English |
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Number of pages | 16 |
State | Published - 2017 |
Event | American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech 2017 - Dallas, Texas Duration: 16 Jan 2017 → 20 Jan 2017 |
Conference
Conference | American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech 2017 |
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City | Dallas, Texas |
Period | 16/01/17 → 20/01/17 |
NREL Publication Number
- NREL/CP-5000-67661
Keywords
- gradient-based optimization
- optimization
- systems engineering
- wind plant design
- wind plant layout optimization