Optimal Yaw Control of a Wind Farm Based on Computational Fluid Dynamics

Energy production can be increased by active yaw control of wind turbines. Active yaw control can deflect the wake region of an upstream wind turbine, increasing the mean wind speed passing through a downstream wind turbine. Conventional optimization of active yaw control maximizes the power generation based on a yawed wake model. However, a yawed wake model cannot predict the blockage effect of a wind farm and the spanwise velocity in the deflected wake region. In the present study, optimal yaw control based on a yawed wake model is shown to be suboptimal in a real-world wind farm by Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations. Considering both the streamwise and the spanwise velocity fields in a wind farm, conventional yaw control is improved to maximize the generated power.