Wake center position tracking using downstream wind turbine hub loads

Having an improved awareness of the flow within a wind farm is useful for power harvesting maximization, load minimization and design of wind farm layout. Local flow information at each wind turbine location can be obtained by using the response of the wind turbines, which are consequently used as distributed sensors. This paper proposes the use of hub loads to track the position of wakes within a wind farm. Simulation experiments conducted within a high-fidelity aeroservoelastic environment demonstrate the performance of the new method.