Turbulence Intensity Becomes a Key Factor When Planning Wind Farms
Wind power plays a substantial part in worldwide plans to increase renewable energy utilisation. In future existing wind farms will need to be repowered and new wind farm sites are going to need to be explored. However, in countries like Germany new sites are becoming rare and there is a limit to the amount of energy that can be generated from a given area. When placing wind turbines too close together turbulence generated by the wakes of the wind turbines may seriously affect their structural integrity and so becomes a limiting factor in wind farm layouts. This holds especially true for complex terrain, where the terrain-generated turbulence makes a significant contribution to the overall load.
By Thomas Hahm, F2E Fluid & Energy Engineering, Germany
Wind power plays a substantial part in worldwide plans to increase renewable energy utilisation. In future existing wind farms will need to be repowered and new wind farm sites are going to need to be explored. However, in countries like Germany new sites are becoming rare and there is a limit to the amount of energy that can be generated from a given area. When placing wind turbines too close together turbulence generated by the wakes of the wind turbines may seriously affect their structural integrity and so becomes a limiting factor in wind farm layouts. This holds especially true for complex terrain, where the terrain-generated turbulence makes a significant contribution to the overall load.By Thomas Hahm, F2E Fluid & Energy Engineering, Germany
