VERTEX
The VERtical Enhanced miXing (VERTEX) field campaign, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, was conducted in Lewes, Delaware, in August-October 2016 near the 2-MW UD/Gamesa wind turbine. Fifteen surface flux towers, a 50-m meteorological tower, a radiometer, and two scanning lidars were installed during VERTEX. Quickplots can be accessed here:
https://archive.eol.ucar.edu/docs/isf/projects/VERTEX/isfs/qcdata/
The goal of VERTEX was to verify if vertical mixing is enhanced near the ground due to the turbulence in the wake of the turbine. We found that it is not. Numerical simulations are being conducted to confirm the observational findings. The papers and conference presentation below summarize the results of the field study:
- Wu, S., C. L. Archer, and R. Delgado, 2019: On the lack of enhanced vertical mixing near the ground under the wake of a wind turbine during the 2016 VERTEX field campaign. 10th Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy, 99th AMS Meeting, Phoenix (AZ), 10 January 2019.
- Archer, C. L., S. Wu, A. Vasel-Be-Hagh, J. F. Brodie, R. Delgado, A. St. Pé, S. Oncley, and S. Semmer, 2019: The VERTEX field campaign: Observations of near-ground effects of wind turbine wakes. Journal of Turbulence, 20(1), 64-92, doi: 10.1080/14685248.2019.1572161.
- Wu, S., and C. L. Archer, 2020: Near-ground effects of wind turbines: Observations and physical mechanisms. Monthly Weather Review, 149(3), 879-898, doi: 10.1175/MWR-D-20-0186.1.
- Wu, S., C. L. Archer, and J. Mirocha, 2022: New insights on wind turbine wakes from large-eddy simulation:
Wake contraction, dual nature, and temperature effects. Wind Energy, under review.
The VERTEX data can be downloaded from here:
https://www.eol.ucar.edu/field_projects/vertex
The VERTEX wiki is available here:
https://wiki.ucar.edu/display/VERTEX
Last update: 6/14/2022