A COMPARISON OF THE OBSERVED WAKE EFFECT WITH SEVERAL WAKE MODELS USING BOTH ANALYTIC AND CFD SIMULATION METHODS - FOR THE CASE OF BLOCK ISLAND OFFSHORE WIND FARM

This paper sets out to analyze the observed wake effect at Block Island Wind Farm. A comparison is made between several wake simulation methods and the observed data at Block Island using analytic and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) modelling methods. The observed wake results at Block Island show a similar trend evident in earlier papers- a large power deficit found between the first two Wind Turbine Generators (WTGs) in the row followed by a slight variation in power along the row for the remainder of the WTGs. A noticeable difference is seen between the last two WTGs in the row where an increase in power is found. This increase in power is thought to be due to the alignment of the wind farm. Nevertheless, when the observed data is compared with the modeled results, the observed data seem to underestimate the wake effect due to misalignment issue with the nacelle wind direction measurement. A sensitivity analysis is conducted on the Wake Decay Constant (WDC) and Turbulence Intensity (TI) values. The results show a maximum power variation of ≈30% between a WDC value of 0.07 and 0.04 and ≈18% for TI values between 8% and 14%. The findings show that a value in the higher range of the examined WDC (0.06 and 0.07) and TI (12% and 14%) values represent a better comparison to the observed data. Nevertheless, it is not recommended to alter these parameters to fit the observed data. Furthermore, due to high uncertainty in the data measurements, and hence observed results, a clear conclusion indicating which wake model best represents the wake effect at Block Island cannot be stated