Numerical study on the horizontal axis turbines arrangement in a wind farm: Effect of separation distance on the turbine aerodynamic power output

•A CFD study of a wind farm with two sets of 2 MW wind turbines was carried out.•A complete wind farm mesh was generated including the rotor, nacelle and tower.•The optimal separation distance was found to be 5D.

This paper presents the results of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study of a wind farm with two sets of 2 MW class wind turbines. CFD analysis was calculated by using the commercial multi-purpose CFD solver ANSYS CFX. Blade design and modeling were based on blade element momentum theory. retain-->The rotational phase of two wind turbine rotors was synchronized, and the distance between the two wind turbines was changed from three to seven times of the rotor diameter. The tilting angle of the 2 MW class wind turbine was set to 5°. A complete wind farm mesh is generated including the rotor, nacelle and tower. The results showed that there was a power output difference due to the wake effect between two wind turbines. The power output of the downstream wind turbine was changed with respect to the separation distance between wind turbines. The optimal compromise between wind farm construction cost, annual energy production and wind turbine lifetime as a function of separation distance is crucial. These CFD results can be applied to wind farm layout design, site evaluation and power output prediction.