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Spectrum of Wind Power Fluctuations

M. M. Bandi
Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 028301 – Published 13 January 2017
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Abstract

Wind power fluctuations for an individual turbine and plant have been widely reported to follow the Kolmogorov spectrum of atmospheric turbulence; both vary with a fluctuation time scale τ as τ2/3. Yet, this scaling has not been explained through turbulence theory. Using turbines as probes of turbulence, we show the τ2/3 scaling results from a large scale influence of atmospheric turbulence. Owing to this long-range influence spanning 100s of kilometers, when power from geographically distributed wind plants is summed into aggregate power at the grid, fluctuations average (geographic smoothing) and their scaling steepens from τ2/3τ4/3, beyond which further smoothing is not possible. Our analysis demonstrates grids have already reached this τ4/3 spectral limit to geographic smoothing.

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  • Received 15 September 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.028301

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

  1. Research Areas
Interdisciplinary PhysicsFluid Dynamics

Synopsis

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Gusts in the Wind

Published 13 January 2017

A turbulence-based model of wind variations explains observed fluctuations in the power output from wind turbines.  

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Authors & Affiliations

M. M. Bandi*

  • Collective Interactions Unit, OIST Graduate University, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan

  • *bandi@oist.jp

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Vol. 118, Iss. 2 — 13 January 2017

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