Current wind farm design and operation

Both onshore and offshore wind turbines are placed and operated in wind farms to reduce the necessary infrastructure and related costs. In a wind farm, it is inevitable that wake interactions take place due to the relative proximity between machines. Wind turbines in the wake of another turbine experience a wind field with a lower average wind speed and higher turbulence intensity, causing a decrease in the available energy, while increasing mechanical loads.

Wake interactions and their effect on power production and fatigue loading are usually taken into account during wind farm planning, design and commissioning, for example by fine-tuning turbine placements and controller settings. Commercial wind farms are typically operated to control loads, power production and lifetime at an individual turbine level. Thus, each turbine is controlled independently based on locally available measurements to optimize its own performance.

However, there is still much unleveraged potential at a wind farm level, in particular for large-scale onshore and offshore farms, with regard to overall operational optimization by taking into account all available data across the farm as well as farm-level interactions between turbines.