Keywords

wind farm optimization, turbine hub height optimization, wind plant design, minimize COE, layout and turbine design

Abstract

Turbine wakes reduce power production in a wind farm. Current wind farms are gen- erally 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 Publication Citation

Stanley, A. P. J., Thomas, J., Ning, A., Annoni, J., Dykes, K., and Fleming, P., “Gradient-Based Optimization of Wind Farms with Different Turbine Heights,” Wind Energy Symposium, Grapevine, TX, AIAA, Jan. 2017. doi:10.2514/6.2017-1619

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2017-1

Permanent URL

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/3805

Publisher

AIAA

Language

English

College

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology

Department

Mechanical Engineering

University Standing at Time of Publication

Assistant Professor

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