FLORIS: FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady State
FLOw Redirection and Induction in Steady State (FLORIS) is an open-source wind plant optimization tool complemented by the FLORIS-based Analysis for Supervisory Control and data acquisition (FLASC) tool.
NREL's capabilities in wind farm control span the process of designing, implementing, and validating wind farm controllers. NREL's real-time wind farm control strategies enable entire plants to adjust to changing wind directions and other conditions via data sharing among turbines.
An essential tool, FLORIS enables existing wind energy facilities to improve productivity and future projects to maximize profits by optimizing flow control strategies, like wake steering. At NREL, researchers use FLORIS to help our partners develop site-specific, optimized flow control strategies that increase productivity, and the tool's performance analysis capabilities demonstrate the impacts of implementing controls and identify potential areas for improvement.
FLASC debuted with FLORIS Version 3.0 (v3.0) and can be used for field data postprocessing, model analysis, and FLORIS-to-SCADA (a companion, open-source repository) data comparison.
The latest version of the open-source FLORIS platform is available for download and collaborative development. In addition, NREL's flow control experts are accessible to academia, manufacturers, developers, and small businesses through multiple partnering formats.
FLORIS is developed by NREL and Delft University of Technology with support from the U.S. Department of Energy Wind Energy Technologies Office. Funding was also provided by the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium.
Latest Version
The latest updates, released in October 2022, include FLORIS Version 3.2 (v3.2) and FLASC Version 1.1 (v1.1). These updates increase these tools’ capabilities and improve user experience.
To update FLORIS to v3.2, the team:
- Added data (such as wind weights) and tools (such as a wind rose) as well as calculation options (such as time series) to improve user flexibility and computational performance
- Refactored layout optimization to improve modularity and performance
- Enabled users to input reference air density parameters to more accurately evaluate turbine performance
- Enabled users to isolate a single grid-point to increase computational speed
- Expanded data outputs (including turbulence intensities and wind speeds at turbines)
- Fixed bugs/errors.
If you have FLORIS installed with PyPI or Conda, you can upgrade to the latest version using your package manager. See the FLORIS installation documentation for more information.
Updates to FLASC v1.1 include Git-based code development practices. FLASC, which is not yet available with PyPl or Conda, must be upgraded locally. The FLASC online documentation has instructions on upgrading your local installation.
These updates build on FLORIS v3.0, which was released in February 2022 as a major redesign and enhancement of the open-source software to allow for faster, more accurate, and more varied computations with several significant improvements for researchers, manufacturers, developers, and small businesses. New algorithms introduced in v3 enable improved memory usage and reduce the number of mathematical operations required. FLORIS also leverages a larger portion of a computer's processor to perform multiple mathematical operations at the same time. A complete redesign of the software architecture makes FLORIS v3 better modularized to enable collaboration and adoption of modern software development standards.
The new cumulative curl model, developed in collaboration with the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium, improves the accuracy of FLORIS' wake models for large offshore wind farms. This includes a new cumulative model for wake superposition.
The new framework of FLORIS v3 includes heterogeneous inflow specification allowing for different wind speeds in three dimensions and every wind direction. The software also supports mixed-turbine models and includes a library of reference wind turbines. The combination of these two features enables the optimization of both turbine type and turbine location within a wind plant.
Future Work
Ongoing work continues to evaluate and develop ways to improve FLORIS and FLASC to enable coupling with hybrid power plant models, build controller modeling, improve wake modeling, and improve user experience with increased computation speed and potential web-based dashboards.
The team is open to and appreciative of user feedback. If you have input on the tool or would like to receive notifications of updates, version launches, and more, please access the community discussion on GitHub or email the team contact.