Modified Power Curves for Prediction of Power Output of Wind Farms

Power curves are used to model power generation of wind turbines, which in turn is used for wind energy assessment and forecasting total wind farm power output of operating wind farms. Power curves are based on ideal uniform inflow conditions, however, as wind turbines are installed in regions of heterogeneous and complex terrain, the effect of non-ideal operating conditions resulting in variability of the inflow must be considered. We propose an approach to include turbulence, yaw error, air density, wind veer and shear in the prediction of turbine power by using high resolution wind measurements. In this study, two modified power curves using standard ten-minute wind speed and high resolution one-second data along with a derived power surface were tested and compared to the standard operating curve for a 2.5 MW horizontal axis wind turbine. Data from supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system along with wind speed measurements from a nacelle-mounted sonic anemometer and wind speed measurements from a nearby meteorological tower are used in the models. The results show that all of the proposed models perform better than the standard power curve while the power surface results in the most accurate power prediction.