Wind power in forests II : Forest wind

Sweden has good conditions for wind power. However, most of Sweden (ca. 70%) is covered by forest. Forests decrease wind speeds and create turbulence, something which is not favourable for wind power. Several Swedish wind maps have shown that forests in Nordic countries can be well suited for wind power (e.g. Bergström and Söderberg 2011, Byrkjedal and Åkervik 2009). At the same time, there is uncertainty over wind conditions over forests at very high altitudes (ca. 150 m above ground). How good do wind resource assessment models agree with measurements? How much energy is a wind turbine in forest going to produce and which loads will a wind turbine in forest experience? This project has investigated all these issues. Work was concentrated in the following work packages: Wind resource at very high heights Turbulence- and wind measurements at very high heights above forest Analysis of turbulence data from forests Model simulations with wind flow models Model simulations with very-high-resolution weather forecast models Model simulations with Large Eddy Simulation (LES) models Improved specification of so-called “synthetic turbulence” over forest Analysis of airborne laser altimeter measurements over forest Forest’s effects on wind turbine energy production Load simulations for wind turbines over forest WP1 studies how wind speed and direction varies with height over forest (up to ca 150 m above ground and higher up). Several profile relations are studied here. Frequency distributions of wind shear and veer are presented. WP2 describes turbulence and wind measurements that have been carried out within the project at Hornamossen. Moreover, the measurement campaign that was carried out in a line over the Hornamossen-hill within the New European Wind Atlas project is described. WP3 analyses turbulence data from Hornamossen together with turbulence data from Ryningsnäs. Of special interest is how turbulence intensity decreases with height as well as if the IEC-standard class A, B or C for wind turbines is complied with at different heights. WP4 describes the newly developed linearised wind flow model ORFEUS with a dedicated forest module. WP5 describes model simulations with WRF and the MIUU model, their sensitivity for surface roughness and turbulence parameterisations. Mean wind profiles from the models are compared to Hornamossen. WP6 describes LES simulations with Chalmers LES model and WRF-LES. LES-resultats depend to a large degree on how the turbulent vortices are initialised at the inflow boundaries of the LES model. Several different methods for that are described. WP7 describes a new turbulence model (the Segalini & Arnqvist model) that includes atmospheric stability. This is a further development of the IEC turbulence model (=Mann model) for neutral stability. Coherence of turbulent winds as well as phase profiles are other improvements of the IEC model. WP8 describes a new method to compute leaf/needle/plant area density from laser scans of the Swedish forest and how one estimates surface roughness and zero plane displacement from that. The new method is compared with two other methods. Results are also compared with official forest data (“skoglig grunddata”). The effect on the wind profile is also shown. WP9 describes the new methods for estimating AEP from the Power Curve Working Group and the IEC standard for Power Performance Testing. Effects on estimated AEP are shown. A new simple model for calculating turbulence effects on energy production is developed and compared with data from a wind farm. Within WP10 a new generic open-source wind turbine is developed and used for load simulations with aero-elastic simulations. Results show that the new coherence model for turbulence gives much smaller loads than the turbulence model of the IEC standard. For more information on the different parts of the project the reader is referred to the report’s introduction, the ”Summary and Conclusions” of each chapter as well as the overall summary (”Executive Summary”) at the end of the report.Wind Power in Forest I