PO.

125

INTEGRATION OF ATMOSPHERIC STABILITY IN WIND POWER ASSESSMENT THROUGH CFD MODELING

Cline BEZAULT (1) Guillaume DUPONT (1) Nicolas GIRARD (2) Olivier TEXIER (2) (1) METEODYN (2) MAIA EOLIS GDF

Abstract Recent studies have shown that atmospheric stability plays a relevant role in wind resource assessment results. According to the measurement data provided to the wind assessment team, several methods like the use of Richardson number can be used to determine the local atmospheric stability. Moreover, orographical and roughness effects are the two main factors inducing perturbations on the wind flow. Hence, it is important to integrate these methods into a software solution that predicts the wind flow with accuracy. This integration has been implemented in the CFD code Meteodyn WT which solves the Reynolds averaged Navier Stokes equations. The results show that the methodologies enable to correctly fit the measurements profile even in forested areas. An operating wind farm located in the North East of France is studied and 16 months of data have been collected. The importance of stability effects is evaluated in comparison to the real production on site and the one computed with CFD taking into account real stability and computations with neutral atmosphere only. Including atmospheric parameters allows us to reduce the error on mean production from 11% to 1%.

Objectives

Topography Roughness Atmospheric stability Wind flow computed by CFD AEP

Atmospheric stability is important for:

on site where the average wind speed is low (<6 m/s); on offshore site, where the atmospheric stability is predominant over the orography and the roughness; simulation on short period, hour or day, as it is used for shortterm prediction, supervision of operation, and power curves measurement with site calibration as defined in the standard IEC 61400-12

Methods Several methods are tested. They depend on the measurements available on site or on a regional met station. Two methods are used to compute the Richardson number. The first one takes into account the gradient of wind speed and temperature. The second one is computed by an iterative method. Both Pasquill and Turner methods use regional data and local value of wind speed. The tables below show the method used for determining the stability class by Turner method by matching wind speed and net radiation.

Turner method

Methods used according to met mast data / regional station

In the same time, a domain is created to compute directional characteristics of the flow thanks to the CFD Meteodyn WT. The CFD takes into account local roughness and topographical data. Domain radius: 4,000 m Horizontal resolution at point of interest: 25 m Vertical resolution: 4 m and geometric progress after 40 m high Directional results (every 10): speed-up coefficient, turbulence intensity, inflow angle, deviation

Results
M1 M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M2 92.21% M3 82.08% 76.89% M4 84.39% 73.29% 97.99% M5 77.79% 73.29% 94.40% 94.05% M6 78.68% 73.73% 79.49% 94.82% 99.82%

Neutral class represents between 45% and 63% according to the method. Unstable cases are less numerous in the method which uses nebulosity data. Cross analysis has been realized in order to check that for example, a stable case with M1 corresponds to a stable case with M4. Conclusions

On the site described in the previous section, the production has been computed by the CFD Meteodyn WT. Considering that the atmosphere is always neutral, the production was overestimated by 11,6%. Less than 1% was found after taking into account the distribution of stability in the AEP computations.

The different methods have been tested according to the measurements available on site or on a regional met station. The methods are consistent and have been validated on a site located in a complex and forested terrain. The improvement in the AEP computation has been proven. More test cases must be executed before integrating this methodology into the CFD Meteodyn WT. Some limitations can be the precision of the temperature sensor (0.1C) and some uncertainties such as roughness calibration. References
[1] Turner, Journal of Applied Meteorology 1992, Vol 31, p83-91 [2] Businger et al., 1971, flux profile relationships in the atmospheric boundary layer, J.Atmos.Sci 28 , 181 - 189 [3] H. Madsen. A Protocol for Standardizing the Performance Evaluation of Short-Term Wind Power Prediction Models. Technical University of Danemark, ANEMOS project, 2004 [4] Meteodyn WT technical documentation