10.2 Best practices for simulating wind farm wakes with the WRF Wind Farm Parameterization.
Tomaszewski, Jessica M., University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), and Julie K. Lundquist, CU Boulder and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Wind farm wakes
can extend over 50 km downwind in stably stratified conditions and pose
significant consequences on downwind power production and subsequent revenue.
As such, wind farm wake impacts must be considered in wind resource assessments
and planning.
The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model includes a Wind Farm
Parameterization (WFP) to estimate wind farm wake effects, but model
configuration choices can influence the resulting predictions of wind farm
wakes. These choices include vertical resolution, horizontal resolution, and
whether or not to include the addition of turbulent kinetic energy generated by
the spinning wind turbines. Despite the sensitivity to model configuration, no
clear guidance currently exists on these options.
“Best practices” can be defined by comparing simulated wind farm wakes produced
by varying model configurations with observations from operating wind plants or
from in-situ meteorological observations. Here we present recommendations for
running WRF WFP based on simulations compared with turbine power production
observations from an onshore wind farm in flat terrain over several diurnal
cycles. Results suggest that a horizontal resolution of 3 km or 1 km paired
with a vertical resolution of 10 m provides the most accurate representation of
wind farm wake effects.