Wind rose dependent min distance in optimize

Circular and eliptical is nice, but the reality is neither. A better approach would be to set a wind rose as distance demands. That way the layout could be optimized with more optimal distances.

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To be honest,

You have the option to do the orientation of "eliptical" form,



from my experience, the way I am using openWIND is like this

First I create the windrose, and I do the orientation of elliptic form by
the

prevailing wind direction,

For parameters for elliptic form I use 3 and 5 diameters, where 3 is minimum
separation

and 5 is the separation in prevailing wind direction.

In this way I have array loses less than 3%, actually around 1% which is
very good result

I know about that functionality.

But how do you do it if you have, for example prevailing wind directions from West and North at the same time? It is not that unusual that there is more than one prevailing wind direction.

Sure, the elliptical restriction can be an ok approach, but when I optimize a farm that costs several hundred millions euro to build, I don't want to create an "ok" layout, I want to create the very best layout possible.

I am looking at including this although for the case you mention (N and W) the separation distance could start to look very like a circle. The thing is that the separation distance needs to be symmetrical so N+W becomes N+S+E+W and so one might imagine two elipses overlapped with their major axes orthogonal to each other. If we don't overlap elipses but use something much more akin to the shape of the wind rose (flipped and maxed of course due to the requirement for symmetry) then the optimiser will tend to cheat and place turbines in the gaps right up against the separation distance which will tend to lead to strange layouts and high total TI values (i.e. that several  hundred million Euro project of yours having several hundred more millions of euros of maintenance issues from turbine loading)

The long and short of this is that I don't see it working the way you think it will but as I've been asked by more than just you I am willing to make an experimental version so you can see for yourselves. I am waiting for a formal spec from one of our partners but I will email any resulting test exe to you as well Daniel. It might not be for a little while though as I have a couple of other things on my plate just now.

Nick