Wake effects of offshore wind farm clusters revealed by SAR and WRF

Abstract

Wake effects, i.e. the reduced momentum and increased turbulence caused by the upstream wind farm, have a significant adverse impact on downstream wind farms. However, due to the lack of ground truth for flow scenarios without wind farms in place (as the wind farm has already been constructed on site), it is extremely difficult to quantify the real impact caused by the presence of upstream wind farms for the downstream area. This paper seeks to develop a potential solution by taking advantage of both SAR and WRF. Specifically, the real-world wind speed with wind farms is retrieved from the SAR images using the C-band model, while the scenario without wind farms is simulated by the WRF model. By combining these two technologies, the potential impact of long-distance wind farm wakes is revealed and analysed.