ECN holds a patent called ‘Controlling Wind’ aiming at misaligning the upwind turbine in a row
such that leeward turbines experience a higher wind and hence an increased power production.
This concept was tested in ECN’s scaled wind farm; to our knowledge for the first time on such
a scale and in field conditions.
The farm consists of 10 turbines divided over the park in three lines of 2, 3 and 4 turbines and one single turbine. Furthermore, meteorological masts are scattered throughout the farm. The
layout of the farm makes it possible to simultaneously measure free wind conditions,
single and/or multiple wake conditions at various spacing.
Generally, it is concluded that, for the moment, no clear overall ‘Controlling Wind’ effect is seen. There is too much scatter in the data and the results are very sensitive to specific data
selections. Nevertheless, the most promising ‘Controlling Wind’ effect is observed for low wind
speed at a yaw misalignment of 4° and 8°.
It was found that the wake skew angle is larger than the yaw misalignment, where the relation
between the two is determined to be 1.37 for all wind speeds and 1.33 for wind speeds between
3-5 m/s and 5-7 m/s. These values seemingly are a bit higher than values in the literature.
A clear decrease in wind speed and increase in turbulence intensity is seen along the turbine
row. No pattern can be seen in the wind speed and turbulence intensity as the result of the
increase in yaw misalignment of the upwind turbine.