Energy reduction in clustered wind farms: The case of two neighboring wind farms in Egypt

Planning of wind power installations in large areas with good wind potential mostly necessitates clustering wind farms of comparable capacities in parcels nearby each others. The present work applies a methodology based on simple momentum theory to estimate the energy yield of a single wind turbine, wind farm and clustered farms in such areas. The effect of up-wind farms on farms down-wind is investigated using the Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP) for two real projects separated by about 2.5 km in Zafarana area on Red Sea coast. The site terrain characteristics, meteorological data, turbine specifications and turbines spatial distribution are used to estimate the area's wind climatology, turbine's energy yield and the change in different operational parameters such as the thrust coefficient, capacity factor, wake losses and plant utilization time. The results; confirmed by the real production data, showed that the energy yield is not only affected by the wind turbines within the site, but also by neighboring wind farms, specially clustered ahead in the prevailing wind direction. Also, it highlights the importance of proper planning of land allocations for wind farms in large area to avoid penalizing existing projects by new ones.