the product

As pressure grows for suitable land-based sites it becomes necessary for wind farm development in complex, often forested terrain. Such terrain poses issues such as structurally damaging turbulence and unexpectedly low energy yields.

Traditional non-CFD wind flow solvers however, are limited by their underlying assumptions to certain types of topography and stability conditions - VENTOS®* is not. Computational Fluid Dynamics, or CFD, is a method for solving the fluid flow equations on complex wind farm sites where a simple analytical solution is impossible.

VENTOS®, the most validated CFD code of its kind addresses these challenges and adds invaluable information to your site analysis including mean wind speed, vertical inflow angle, turbulence intensity and extreme turbulence.

Product features include:

  • Forest canopy: estimate the effect of forestry on wind speed by integrating canopy cover into the flow physics - the only model currently able to do so
  • Stability: there are proven cases where atmospheric stability must be taken into account in order to produce a reliable wind flow map. VENTOS® simulates different stability classes using a full-buoyancy non-hydrostatic model, not just by modification of the diffusion terms
  • Integration into Mesoscale climate models to provide extra-precise short-term prediction

Product accreditations include:

  • Rigorous scientific validation over a period of 12 years has resulted in a number of refereed publications, printed in the leading journals for atmospheric fluid mechanics
  • Extensively used in over 2000 MW of projects at sites in the UK, Norway, Sweden, France, Portugal, Italy, and the US amongst others. VENTOS® results have been used in several bank due diligence reports
  • Continuous CEsA - Research Centre for Wind Energy and Atmospheric Flows at Porto University, Faculty of Engineering (FEUP)

Product outputs include:

  • Mean wind speed taking into account complex topography, forest and atmospheric stability
  • Vertical inflow angle used by manufacturers to assess the suitability of turbine positions