Energetica India Magazine - September 2022

energetica INDIA- September_2022 41 WIND ENERGY model parameterization added an array, with the same theoretical wind turbine, to the OCS-A 0539 lease area. Loca- tions of the lease areas can be seen in the BOEM map below in Figure 1. Energy losses based on the WRF-WFP results were calculated and compared to two established engineering models: the Eddy Viscosity Deep Array Wake Model (EV DAWM) and ArcVera’s wind farm-atmosphere interaction (WFAI) model. The results below show that conventional wake models produce much smaller wake losses than the more computationally advanced WRF-WFP model. In Case 1, external wake losses were measured at 13.0% compared to 0.5% at lease area OCS-A 0538 due to the neighboring ar- rays within lease areas OCS-A 0541 and OCS-A 0542 using WRF-WFP with EV DAWM external wake loss, and negligi- ble losses with WFAI. In Case 2, exter- nal wake losses due to the arrays within OCS-A 0539, OCS-A 0541, and OCS-A 0542, were measured at 28.9% with WRF-WFP compared to 5.3% with EV DAWM and 0.2% with WFAI. Table 1. Modeled long-range external wake losses at New York Bight Lease Area 0538 for the 16 selected days of primarily southwest wind direction, with separate results for wakes from Lease Area 0539 only, and from the combination of Lease Areas 0539, 0541, and 0542. Losses are expressed as the percent of gross energy. Figure 2. Waked wind speed deficit at hub height (m/s, color scale at bottom), from the WRF-WFP simulations of the New York Bight lease areas, at 1530 EST, 24 Feb 2020. “x” symbols indicate the locations of floating lidars. ArcVera’s leadership is focused on what the results mean for the future of fore- casting wind energy production. “This new study provides an important cau- tionary lesson as the wind industry pro- ceeds to ever-larger wind turbine mod- els with greater farm density across the globe. WRF-WFP’s results here imply that wind energy resource assessments using only engineering wake or WFAI models may overpredict energy by a sig- nificant margin, pending further valida-