Why a scaled wind farm?

For the development of large (offshore) wind farms it is essential to understand the detailed wind field in and around the farm. The wake effect of individual turbines have a strong influence on energy production and mechanical loads of other turbines. Understanding these influences strongly supports aerodynamic research programs and allows for the development of optimised control strategies. Reliable computer models are required that predict the steady and unsteady wind flows in wind farms and the response of individual wind turbines. For the development of these models adequate measurements are crucial. These measurements are not available yet. The main reason for that is that accurate flow determination requires many metrological towers. For full scale measurement this would be far too expensive. Therefore accurate wind flow measurements in wind farms are lacking. This has hindered research on wind farm aerodynamics and control.
The value of wind tunnel data as an alternative for full scale measurements is limited due to scaling effects. ECN has overcome these problems by building a scaled wind farm facility. Its scale is large enough to alleviate the dominant scaling effects and the scale is sufficiently small to permit the building of sufficient meteorological masts.