Terrain-induced aerodynamic disturbances and wind sector management of a wind turbine in complex terrain: a SCADA–CFD cross-validation study at the Tetouan wind farm

Wind turbines operating in complex terrain are exposed to terrain-induced aerodynamic disturbances, such as strong vertical wind shear, wind veer, turbulence and flow deviation, which increase asymmetric rotor loading and can degrade operational reliability. The quantitative link between such disturbances, the operational response recorded by the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, and the parameterisation of Wind Sector Management (WSM) strategies remains insufficiently documented for real turbines. This study analyses a 3.0 MW turbine (WTG 30, 80 m hub height) of the Tétouan wind farm (Morocco), located 300 m west of a hill that overlaps 72.8%–99.9% of the rotor-swept area. The methodology combines long-term-corrected wind-resource characterisation (WDA, WAsP 11 and WindPRO 3.4), a sector-binned analysis of SCADA data from WTG 30 and its two neighbouring turbines, steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) and unsteady Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) of the flow at rotor top, hub and rotor bottom for ten inflow sectors (50°–140°), and quasi-steady rotor-load indicators derived from the simulated inflow. The DES results identify two critical regimes: for 50°–80°, the whole rotor lies in the hill wake (mean rotor-top speed 2.7–5.5 m/s for a 14.7 m/s undisturbed reference), whereas for 90°–130° the upper rotor remains exposed to 14.6–15.6 m/s while the rotor bottom experiences only 2.2–3.9 m/s. This produces rotor shear exponents of 1.08–1.52 (versus 0.2 for the IEC normal wind profile), wind veer of 43°–95° across the rotor, and blade-root 1P flapwise and rotor-tilt load indicators 2.1–3.2 times higher than for a uniform IEC reference inflow. The SCADA data independently show that, for easterly winds, WTG 30 deviates from its neighbours by a mean absolute direction of 24°–36° (versus 4°–7° for westerly winds), and the sector-wise SCADA wind-speed reduction correlates with the CFD rotor-equivalent wind-speed ratio ( r = 0.81, p < 0.01). On this basis, the WSM settings of WTG 30 are revised (stop at all wind speeds for 35°–85°, above 10 m/s for 85°–135° and above 12 m/s for 180°–200°), at the cost of an estimated annual energy production loss of 37.6% (3.19 GWh/year) compared with 20.5% (1.74 GWh/year) for the current settings. The results show that combining CFD and SCADA data provides a quantitative, physics-based basis for identifying critical sectors and setting reliability-oriented operating strategies in complex terrain, while component-level aeroelastic validation remains necessary.