We present a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling strategy for onshore wind farms aimed at predicting and opti- mizing the production of farms using a CFD model that includes meteorological data assimilation, complex terrain and wind turbine effects. The model involves the solution of the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations together with a k-ɛ turbulence model specially designed for the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL). The model involves automatic meshing and generation of boundary conditions with atmospheric boundary layer shape for the entering wind flow. As the integration of the model up to the ground surface is still not viable for complex terrains, a specific law of the wall including roughness effects is implemented. The wake effects and the aerodynamic behavior of the wind turbines are described using the actuator disk model, upon which a volumetric force is included in the momentum equations. The placement of the wind turbines and a mesh refinement for the near wakes is done by means of a Chimera method. The model is implemented in Alya, a High Performance Computing (HPC) multi physics parallel solver based on finite elements and developed at Barcelona Supercomputing Center.

The research of G. Houzeaux is being partly done under a I3 contract with the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Inovación. The work of B. Eguzkitza is financed by a scholarship from the Fundación IBERDROLA supporting the project ”Optimization of wind farms using computational fluid dynamics”.

Peer Reviewed