It’s no surprise that changing wind flows significantly affect wind-turbine performance and lead to substantial uncertainties when assessing wind resources. That makes it important to understand the flow field over space and time. Techniques pioneered by a research group in a recently published paper can offer project engineers and developers with an understanding that allows…

International renewable-energy consultancy Natural Power says it has placed a no-cost-to-use, on the Web to estimate wind-flow complexity on potential wind farm sites. As potential development sites with, flat terrain become fewer, more projects are built in or near forests and on complex terrain. These complex-flow sites are often associated with harsh wind conditions likely…

To bring costs down, wind-energy firms are recognizing the design benefits of numerical simulation. Transitioning to a simulation-based design process lets OEMs optimize performance and increase a turbine’s power output. A valuable tool in this process is Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. It has traditionally played a role in the design of rotorcraft, fixed-wing aircraft,…

Designing the most efficient and effective wind turbine calls for modeling tools that provide accurate, reliable numerical predictions of wind-turbine rotor performance over a machine’s full range of operating conditions. Simulating real-world conditions using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) lets users understand flow phenomena and their effects on the system, better predict the system’s power output,…

Recent advances in CFD (computational fluid dynamics) codes and the availability of large scale computer “clusters” are guiding the design work of the next generation of wind turbines. Developers should be able to model a turbine’s power output versus wind velocity, and then the power output for a wind farm with direction data. In addition,…