Energy harvesting via co-locating horizontal- and vertical-axis wind turbines

Michael Hansen, Peter Enevoldsen, Mahdi Abkar

Published 2020-02-24Version 1

Co-locating horizontal- and vertical-axis wind turbines has been recently proposed as a possible approach to enhance the land-area power density of wind farms. In this work, we aim to study the benefits associated with such a co-location using large-eddy simulation (LES) and analytical wake models. In this regard, small-scale vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) in triangular clusters are deployed within a finite-size wind farm consisting of horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs). Wake flow within the wind farm and the effect of VAWTs on the overall wind-farm efficiency are investigated and quantified. The results show that the optimal deployment of small-scale VAWTs has a negligible impact on the performance of HAWT arrays while increasing the total power production. For the particular cases considered here, the power output of the co-located wind farm increases up to 21% compared to the baseline case in which only the HAWTs are present. A budget analysis of the mean kinetic energy is carried out to shed light on the impact of VAWTs on energy transport into the wind-farm wake. Also, by comparing to the LES results, it is shown that the analytical framework proposed here is able to accurately predict the power production of wind farms including both HAWTs and VAWTs. Finally, as a real-world application, potential benefits of deploying small-scale VAWTs inside the Horns Rev 1 wind farm are explored for various wind directions using the validated wake model. The results show potential for about an 18% increase in the wind-farm power production, averaged over all wind directions, for a particular VAWT layout investigated in this study.