Big wind power: seven questions for turbulence research

ABSTRACT

The accelerating growth of wind energy in recent years mandates improved understanding of wind turbine, wind farm and atmospheric turbulence interactions. Fluid turbulence plays a vital role in these interactions, motivating the present formulation of several pertinent questions for turbulence research. These questions touch upon the need for better analytical, synthetic and reduced order models of turbulence, better model coupling methods and basic understanding of flow phenomena governing kinetic energy entrainment and limiting power densities. Responding to the formulated questions may lead to improvements in wind energy harvesting.

KEYWORDS:

• Turbulence
• wind energy
• boundary layers

Acknowledgments

The author thanks C.L. Archer, J. Bossuyt, J. Bretheim, R.B. Cal, M. Calaf, L. Castillo, M.J. Churchfield, D.F. Gayme, M.F. Howland, J. Lebrón, S. Leonardi, L.J. Lukassen, L.A. Martínez-Tossas, J. Meyers, W. Munters, M.B. Parlange, F. Porté-Agel, H. Sarlak, A. Sescu, C. Shapiro, G. Starke, J.N. Sørensen, R.J.A.M. Stevens, C. VerHulst, M. Wilczek and D. Yang for collaborations and many insightful conversations on the topic of wind farm modelling, simulations and measurements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation (grant # CMMI 1635430).