Abstract

phenomenon. In particular, the immense amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution caused an unprecedented rise in global temperatures. Most countries around the world agreed on reducing or downright eliminate carbon emissions in the subsequent years. Renewable energy production gained tremendous momentum in the last decade thanks to technological advancement that decreased their generation costs, which made them a viable solution when compared to traditional approaches. Wind power emerges as one of the fastest growing technologies, with an already installed capacity of 487 GW by 2016 [1], and a projection of 18% of global capacity by 2050 [2]. In this work, we modelled a small-sized wind farm using the SST k-w turbulence model, where the presence of the wind turbines is approximated via a compact model that acts as a momentum sink, representing the conversion of kinetic energy in the airflow into rotating energy at the blades. The three-dimensional unsteady simulations were carried using the software ANSYS Fluent, validated against data in the literature. We found that considering the Atmospheric Boundary Layer affects the results in nonnegligible ways. We also observed an effect if the turbines are placed in a slope. In future efforts, we expect to model more complex geometries that resemble the topology of the Coquimbo region in Chile.