Wake-Steering Fleet Control for a Wind Farm: Designing Against the Spacing and Wake Tax
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Design study of wake-steering fleet control for a reference wind farm (20 turbines of 3.0 MW, 120 m rotors, 6 by 4 rotor-diameter spacing, 691.2 ha), modelled with a Gaussian engineering wake model against the wake and land losses priced by a companion audit (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.24102414, atmospheric replenishment bound 0.5-1.0 W/m2). SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED; nothing was built or field-tested. The greedy fleet loses 40.9 percent of free-stream power to wakes in the dominant sector at 8 m/s. An optimised per-row yaw schedule (5, 17.5, 15, 0, 0 degrees) recovers +0.68 percent of fleet power in the dominant sector and +389 MWh a year (+0.25 percent, +64.3 W per hectare) across the full wind rose in neutral air; +4.37 percent in stable low-turbulence air; zero in unstable high-turbulence air, where forcing the schedule loses 2.01 percent. A fixed schedule loses money under wind-direction spread of 3 degrees or more. Added yaw-actuator duty roughly doubles yaw travel on steered turbines and costs $16,260 a year against $23,368 of extra energy, a net of +$7,109 a year at stated prices.
Author: Aldred, William Alexander
Language: English
Field: Energy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225752268