Fish schooling as a basis for vertical axis wind turbine farm design

TL;DR

This paper explores how fish schooling-inspired arrangements of vertical axis wind turbines can significantly enhance land-area power output, outperforming traditional horizontal turbines by over tenfold.

Contribution

It introduces a flow model analyzing VAWT interactions and demonstrates a fish schooling-based geometric arrangement that boosts array performance.

Findings

Array performance coefficient is significantly increased.

Power output can be over ten times higher than HAWTs.

Fish schooling-inspired arrangements improve turbine efficiency.

Abstract

Most wind farms consist of horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs) due to the high power coefficient (mechanical power output divided by the power of the free-stream air through the turbine cross-sectional area) of an isolated turbine. However when in close proximity to neighbouring turbines, HAWTs suffer from a reduced power coefficient. In contrast, previous research on vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) suggests that closely-spaced VAWTs may experience only small decreases (or even increases) in an individual turbine's power coefficient when placed in close proximity to neighbours, thus yielding much higher power outputs for a given area of land. A potential flow model of inter-VAWT interactions is developed to investigate the effect of changes in VAWT spatial arrangement on the array performance coefficient, which compares the expected average power coefficient of turbines in an array to a spatially-isolated turbine. A geometric arrangement based on the configuration of shed vortices in the wake of schooling fish is shown to significantly increase the array performance coefficient based upon an array of 16x16 wind turbines. Results suggest increases in power output of over one order of magnitude for a given area of land as compared to HAWTs.