Impact of different wake models on the estimation of wind farm power generation

The power generation of a wind farm is significantly less than the summation of the power generated by each turbine when operating as a standalone entity. This power reduc- tion can be attributed to the energy loss due to the wake effects - the resulting velocity deficit in the wind downstream of a turbine. In the case of wind farm design, the wake losses are generally quantified using wake models. The effectiveness of wind farm design (seeking to maximize the farm output) therefore depends on the accuracy and the reliability of the wake models. This paper compares the impact of the following four analytical wake models on the wind farm power generation: (i) the Jensen model, (ii) the Larsen model, (iii) the Frandsen model, and (iv) the Ishihara model. The sensitivity of this impact to the Land Area per Turbine (LAT) and the incoming wind speed is also investigated. The wind farm power generation model used in this paper is adopted from the Unrestricted Wind Farm Layout Optimization (UWFLO) methodology. Single wake case studies show that the velocity deficit and the wake diameter estimated by the different analytical wake models can be significantly different. A maximum difference of 70% was also observed for the wind farm capacity factor values estimated using different wake models.