Evaluation of tilt control for wind-turbine arrays in the atmospheric boundary layer

TL;DR

This study evaluates how tilting wind turbine rotors in arrays within the atmospheric boundary layer can significantly increase power output by redirecting wakes and exploiting vertical wind shear, with optimal gains at specific rotor sizes and tilt angles.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of power gains from rotor tilting in wind-turbine arrays, highlighting the influence of rotor size, tilt angle, and thrust coefficient on efficiency improvements.

Findings

Large power gains at ~30° tilt angles.

Maximum gains at rotor diameters around 3.6 boundary layer thickness.

Optimal spanwise spacing aligns with natural streaky motions.

Abstract

Wake redirection is a promising approach designed to mitigate turbine-wake interactions which have a negative impact on the performance and lifetime of wind farms. It has recently been found that substantial power gains can be obtained by tilting the rotors of spanwise-periodic wind-turbine arrays. Rotor tilt is associated to the generation of coherent streamwise vortices which deflect wakes towards the ground and, by exploiting the vertical wind shear, replace them with higher-momentum fluid (high-speed streaks). The objective of this work is to evaluate power gains that can be obtained by tilting rotors in spanwise-periodic wind-turbine arrays immersed in the atmospheric boundary layer and, in particular, to analyze the influence of the rotor size on power gains in the case where the turbines emerge from the atmospheric surface layer. We show that, for the case of wind-aligned arrays, large power gains can be obtained for positive tilt angles of the order of 30{\deg}. Power gains are substantially enhanced by operating tilted-rotor turbines at thrust coefficients higher than in the reference configuration. These power gains initially increase with the rotor size reaching a maximum for rotor diameters of the order of 3.6 boundary layer momentum thicknesses (for the considered cases) and decrease for larger sizes. Maximum power gains are obtained for wind-turbine spanwise spacings which are very similar to those of large-scale and very large scale streaky motions which are naturally amplified in turbulent boundary layers. These results are all congruent with the findings of previous investigations of passive control of canonical boundary layers for drag-reduction applications where high-speed streaks replaced wakes of spanwise-periodic rows of wall-mounted roughness elements.