Influência da topografia no escoamento atmosférico em um parque eólico: integração de dados reais de topografia e WRF

Abstract

This document presents an analysis of the atmospheric boundary layer flow in a wind farm using real topography data and input forcings from the WRF numerical weather prediction model through the PALM Atmospheric Model. PALM allows for the inclusion of global attributes, topographical data, surface properties, vegetation properties, among others, which enables the configuration of input variables and simulation parameters to reflect the actual conditions of the region of interest. The selected study area was the Cerro Chato Wind Farm I, II, and III, located in the municipality of Santana do Livramento in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The methodology involved the preparation of the necessary input files to configure and update the namelist, including static topography files and dynamic boundary condition files to allow for simulation by PALM. Two simulations were conducted: the first with only the WRF data, without topography, and the second with both WRF data and topography. The simulations were used to evaluate the atmospheric boundary layer flow and the effects of disturbances caused by wind turbines. An analysis was carried out to identify the differences in flow due to complex terrain compared to flat terrain and to understand its influence on the flow, as well as the individual investigation of the wind turbines. The results showed that the flow behavior throughout the wind farm was consistent with the study conducted by Abkar e Porté-Agel (2015) regarding the characterization of the convective boundary layer (CBL) and the stable boundary layer (SBL), as well as the influence of atmospheric thermal stability on the spatial distribution of the average velocity deficit. Individually, all wind turbines showed higher production in the case where topography was considered, with an individual average increase of up to 0.42 MW in production during the analyzed period.