Optimizing the turbines distribution in wind farms based on mutual minimization of the wake effect

Romania is considered the country in Southeast Europe with the highest wind potential, with a production capacity of over 14 GW. Currently, due to the investments of over 9 billion euros made in wind farms, approximately 2500 MW are produced from wind, representing about 20-25% of domestic energy production. In addition to the existing wind power plants, three more new wind farms will soon be realized. This paper presents a methodology for optimizing the distribution of turbines in a wind farm so as to minimize the mutual influence of turbines during operation, due to the wake effect. A correlation is created between the mast-induced disturbances and the turbine nacelle, the recorded atmospheric data, and the number of turbines rows. Fluent software is used to model the main vortex produced by the rotor, for which the computational field is structured in the main wind direction. The vortices behind the rotor and nacelle are estimated. The measured and recorded data of significant air parameters in the future location of the wind farm, in the southern part of Moldova, are briefly presented. The numerical model was tested for several types of turbines with a capacity of about 2 MW, thus conducting a comparative study. Based on these results, the possible energy to be produced multi-annually was evaluated. A new correction of the turbine distribution was made, by estimating the implementation costs of the wind farm with turbines distributed in two and 100 rows.