Wind Farm Scale CFD Study: Linking Weather Results with CFD

Scotia Weather Services Inc. (SWSI) is a Dartmouth, NS, based company who specialized in weatherforecasting with an emphasis in wind forecasting for applications as diverse as ship routing, aviation terminalforecast and public weather reports. SWSI is also using their wind forecasting capacities to provideinformation to utilities and wind farm operators that relates to energy production forecasting. This processcurrently involves using the large grid North American Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) models tonumerically determine the expected wind and pressure field in the vicinity of a wind farm, and feeding thisinformation to the California Meteorological (CALMET) model which interpolates the larger grid size resultsto a finer scale (tens of meters). This only leads to predictions that capture general wind and energy trends onan hourly basis, not accurate enough for proper forecasting.A possible solution to this problem is to move towards computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of the flow overthe wind farm, using the WRF model to provide boundary conditions, in order to capture an acceptable level oftransient and other physical processes over the turbine in the wind farm.The expertise in CFD numerical modeling in the applicant's laboratory will be used to perform this initial stageof research. The proposed research aims to extend the application of CFD in wind flows over complex terrainto near real-time wind speed and wind turbine power output forecasting. This application is the subject ofsignificant interest in both research and industrial communities, as high resolution wind output forecasting willbe integral to successfully and efficiently incorporating ever increasing fractions of wind energy into theelectrical system.