Optimization of Turbine Tilt in a Wind Farm

Wind farm power production is significantly affected by upstream turbines creating wakes of slower wind speeds that overlap the rotor swept areas of downstream turbines. By optimizing the tilt angle of the turbines in a farm, wakes may be deflected away from downstream turbines, increasing the overall energy production. In this study, we optimized the tilt angle of turbines in a wind farm to maximize energy production. We used an analytic wake model modified for gradient-based optimization to consider wake deflection from tilt. We considered optimizing the tilt angle of each turbine assuming that it remained fixed for the lifetime of the farm. We also considered active tilt control. In a test case using the Princess Amalia 60-turbine wind farm, optimizing fixed tilt angles resulted in a 2.77% increase in the annual energy production(AEP) while using active tilt control resulted in an 13.64% increase in AEP.