Reducing LCoE from offshore wind by multiscale wake modeling

Content

  • Overview
  • Research progress
  • Publications
  • Presentations
  • Team
  • Related readings
  • Professor Pryor's Homepage
  • Professor Barthelmie's Homepage

    • Overview

    Wind turbines work by extracting momentum from the air and converting that energy into electricity. In doing so they generate wakes in the air behind them - these wakes have lower wind speed and higher turbulence intensity. They dissipate by mixing with and drawing momentum from surrounding air. Thus these wakes 'recover' as they move downstream. Wakes are formed both by individual wind turbines and wind turbine clusters. Ideally no wind turbine or wind farm would operate in the wake of an upstream wind turbine or wind farm, but increasing this spacing increases cost (via cabling) and takes up more space. What we need to do is balance these factors. How far do these wakes extend? It depends on the atmospheric conditions - wind speeds, turbulence intensity and stability. As an example the figure on the right shows the spatial extent of wind turbine wakes around a wind turbine cluster in Iowa during two different months (February and April) that have different wind speeds and ambient turbulence intensity. As shown the wakes extend further during the month with low turbulence intensity (February). Because turbulence intensity if typically lower offshore, wind turbine wakes are deeper and more spatially extensive or water surfaces. The figure also shows two different wind farm paramaterizations (Fitch and EWP) exhibit substantially different spatial scales of whole wind farm wakes. Our project is designed to improve understanding of these differences and the physics of wind turbine wakes and contribute to ensuring the expansion of offshore wind energy in the USA is done in a way that maximizes power output and minimizes cost.
    We will develop and apply a systematic framework to quantify atmospheric flow characteristics and within wind farm and between wind farm wake losses using a robust multi-scale model chain that provides sufficient technical detail about the US offshore environment to simulate both the impact of turbine layouts and multiple wind farms on the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE).

    Watch a very brief youtube video about our work as presented at the Science of Making Torque from Wind in Delft in June 2022 here A poster of this work is shown to the right.
    A short precis of our work is also available in the industry trade magazine Windtech International. You can read it for free here



    Research progress/meetings/Advisory board

    The project started on 1 June 2020.

    Project meetings

  • 1 July 2020: Project kick-off meeting.
  • 17 September 2020: First meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 3 December 2020: Second meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 3 March 2021: Third meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 2 June 2021: Forth meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 1 September 2021: Fifth meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 1 December 2021: Sixth meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 1 March 2022: Seventh meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 1 June 2022: Eighth meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 1 September 2022: Nineth meeting with the expert external advisory board
  • 30 November 2022: Final meeting with the expert external advisory board

    External advisory board

    Our external advisory board is; Jasper Kreeft (Shell), Cedric Dall'Ozzo (EDF), Nicolai Gayle Nygaard (Orsted), plus Shannon Davis (DoE).

    Media coverage

    Our project was described in the Cornell Chronicle (13 October 2020) and the Cornell-CALS news website (13 October 2020)

    Publications

  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J., Hahmann A.N. and Garcia Santiago O.M. (2022): Wakes in and between very large offshore arrays. Journal of Physics: Conference series 2265 doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/2265/2/022037 .
  • Barthelmie R.J., Larsen G.C., Mølgaard Pedersen M. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Microscale modeling of wind turbines in the New York offshore lease area. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 2265 doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/2265/2/022040.
  • Debnath M., Scholbrock A.K., Zalkind D., Moriarty P., Simley E., Hamilton D., Ivanov A., Barthelmie R., Bodini N., Brewer A., Herges T., Hirth B., Iungo G.V., Jager D., Kaul C., Klein P., Krishnamurthy R., Letizia S., Lundquist J.K., Newsom R., Pryor S.C., Ritsche M.T., Roadman J., Schroeder J., Shaw W.J., Van Dam J., Wharton S. (2022): Design of American Wake Experiment field campaign. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 2265 doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/2265/2/022058 .
  • Aird J.A., Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Occurrence of low-level jets over the eastern US coastal zone at heights relevant to wind energy. Energies, 15, 445 doi: 10.3390/en15020445
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T.J. (2021): Wind power production from very large offshore wind farms. Joule doi: 10.1016/j.joule.2021.09.002
  • Barthelmie R.J., Dantuono K., Renner E., Letson F.W. and Pryor S.C. (2021): Extreme wind and waves in U.S. east coast offshore wind energy lease areas. Energies 14 1053 doi: 10.3390/en14041053

    Presentations

  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J., Hahmann A.N. and Garcia Santiago O.M. (2022): Wakes in and between very large offshore arrays, Science of Making Torque from Wind, Delft, The Netherlands 1-3 June 2022.
  • Barthelmie R.J., Larsen G.C., Mølgaard Pedersen M. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Microscale modeling of wind turbines in the New York offshore lease area, Science of Making Torque from Wind, Delft, The Netherlands 1-3 June 2022.
  • Debnath M., Scholbrock A.K., Zalkind D., Moriarty P., Simley E., Hamilton D., Ivanov A., Barthelmie R., Bodini N., Brewer A., Herges T., Hirth B., Iungo G.V., Jager D., Kaul C., Klein P., Krishnamurthy R., Letizia S., Lundquist J.K., Newsom R., Pryor S.C., Ritsche M.T., Roadman J., Schroeder J., Shaw W.J., Van Dam J., Wharton S. (2022): Design of American Wake Experiment field campaign. Science of Making Torque from Wind, Delft, The Netherlands 1-3 June 2022.
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T.J. (2022): Power and Wakes in the U.S. East Coast Offshore Lease Areas. American Meteorological Society 102nd Annual conference Houston, TX January 2022.
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T.J. (2021): Wind power production from the U.S. east coast offshore lease areas. American Geophysical Union Annual conference, New Orleans, LA December 2021.
  • Pryor, S.C. and Barthelmie, R.J. (2021): Reducing LCoE from offshore wind by multiscale wake modelling, at the NOWRDC Seminar, 9 November 2021
  • Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2021): Extreme wind and wave conditions derived using the high-resolution ERA5 reanalysis. Wind Energy Science Conference (WESC) Hannover, Germany May 2021
  • Shepherd T.J., Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2021): Sensitivity of wind turbine wake effects and array-array interactions to wind farm parameterization and model resolution. Wind Energy Science Conference (WESC) Hannover, Germany May 2021.
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T.J. (2021): 20% of US electricity from onshore wind: Impacts on wakes, system efficiency and regional climate. Wind Energy Science Conference (WESC) Hannover, Germany May 2021.
  • Barthelmie R.J., Shepherd T.J. and Pryor S.C. (2021): Offshore wakes in the U.E. east coast lease areas. Wind Energy Science Conference (WESC) Hannover, Germany May 2021.
  • Barthelmie R.J. and Pryor S.C. (2020): Reducing LCoE from offshore wind by multiscale wake modeling: Project overview. Presented at NOWRDC symposium (Nov 11 2020)

    Team

  • Professor Sara C. Pryor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  • Professor Rebecca J. Barthelmie, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
  • Dr. Tristan Shepherd, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (now at Fannie Mae: Sustainability Science)
  • Ms. Jeanie Aird, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

    • Related readings

  • Barthelmie R.J., Aird J., Letson F. and Pryor S.C. (2022): Wind, waves and wakes for the U.S. east coast offshore lease areas. WindTech International, 18 #3 p20-22.
  • Pryor S.C. and Barthelmie R.J. (2021): A global assessment of extreme wind speeds for wind energy applications. Nature Energy doi: 10.1038/s41560-020-00773-7
  • Pryor S.C., Barthelmie R.J. and Shepherd T.J. (2020): 20% of US electricity from wind will have limited impacts on system efficiency and regional climate. Nature: Scientific Reports 10 541 doi:10.1038/s41598-019-57371-1
  • Pryor S.C., Shepherd T.J., Volker P., Hahmann A.N. and Barthelmie R.J. (2020): ‘Wind theft’ from onshore wind turbine arrays: Sensitivity to wind farm parameterization and resolution. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 59 153-174
  • Barthelmie R.J., Hansen K. and Pryor S.C. (2013): Meteorological controls on wind turbine wakes. Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 101 1010-1019
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