Operational characteristics of a 27-MW wind farm from experimental data

The diffusion of wind systems is emerging in several countries, with solutions of different type and size. The analysis of experimental results gathered on-site is essential to understand the characteristics of the wind systems and of their interconnection to the grid. The basic aspects of the experimental analyses concern availability of the wind resource, efficiency of the plants, and power quality of the grid connected wind system. This paper illustrates and discusses the results obtained from monitoring a 27-MW wind farm with SCADA systems and network analysers. A dedicated procedure for efficiency evaluation of the wind turbines is presented, whose results underline evident mismatches between the actual performance and the data provided by the manufacturer.