Effective short-cut modelling of wind park efficiency

A short-cut model suitable for the estimation of the overall wind park efficiency was developed. Its parameters were estimated by fitting the predictions of a detailed explicit kinematic wake model for a wide range of wind velocities, number of turbines utilized, relative distances of turbines and various types of commercial wind turbines. An empirical model was used to represent the turbine power curve. The turbine grid adopted was the uniform one, where each individual machine is equally placed between its neighbours. The proposed short-cut model represented the full model in a quite satisfactory way and it was presented in a suitable formulation for dealing with wind park preliminary design problems. The effect of wind direction was also taken into consideration and was properly analysed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.