An empirical estimation of power output of a miniaturized wind turbine cluster

A miniaturized wind turbine cluster intended for educational purposes is used to build a 4×4 model wind turbine farm. This deployment is part of an exercise to model and optimize the output energy associated with the farm. An empirical approach is used to estimate the power and the power coefficient curves from data acquired in the field. An extrapolated power and power factor model is developed for further estimation of the power output of the wind turbines and the efficiency of the turbines at different wind speeds. The proposed approach is simple and requires minimal cost as opposed to other approaches based on wind tunnel measurements. Field experiments are carried out in this regard and the downwind distance and pitch angle are changed in field testing in terms of an experimental parameter study. The work emphasizes the potential of using small-scale models to understand and investigate interaction of wind turbines in a cluster.