Renewable Energy Research by the UK Turbulence Consortium

Simulating and understanding turbulent is one of the most challenging problems in science. Many of the environmental and energy-related issues we face today cannot possibly be tackled without a better understanding of turbulence. The overarching objective of the UK Turbulence Consortium (UKTC) is to facilitate world-class turbulence research using national High-End Computing (HEC) resources. The consortium serves as a forum to communicate research and HEC expertise within the UK turbulence community, and to help UK science remain internationally leading in this aspect of HEC-based research.

In this video, the focus is on renewable energy with two examples as explain below:
-wake to wake interaction in large-scale wind farm: turbulence is affecting the performance of the wind farm and control solutions need to be found to increase power outputs. Wind farms cannot achieve their expected power output due to mutual interference between the wind turbine wakes. This is because of wake-turbine blade interactions, where the incoming wind velocity decreases and the intense velocity fluctuations occur in the upstream of the downstream turbine. The simulations done in the UKTC are helping to design control strategies thanks to a better understanding of wake to wake interactions. For example, we are looking at wake steering, which is a wind farm control strategy in which upstream wind turbines are misaligned with the wind to redirect their wakes away from downstream turbines, thereby increasing the net wind plant power production and reducing fatigue loads generated by wake turbulence.

-tidal turbines: Tidal stream energy uses turbines to extract energy from moving water in oceans and rivers (it is basically underwater turbines). Unlike wind, tidal streams are predictable hence more reliable, so with a great potential for generating renewable energy. The simulations done in the UKTC are helping to better understand the effect of the waves on the performance of the turbines as well as for the design of control solutions to maximise power output (when tidal turbines operate under combined current and waves, the changes in free surface has a significant influence on wake characteristics, hence on performance).