Case Study about Wind Farm
Distributed Generation and Renewables
Introduction: Nowadays, most European governments are well aware of the potential of wind energy. From 1980 to 2000, the awareness of wind energy was mainly concentrated in Denmark and Germany where a large number of wind turbines were manufactured and installed. Germany still leads in terms of annually installed capacity with Spain close behind. Over the last 5 to 10 years many European governments have developed policies to promote renewable energy sources, including wind energy. Prominent examples are the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Eastern European countries where wind energy is already installed or incentives are defined to boost the increase of renewables.
During the last 20 to 25 years the implementation of wind energy has changed dramatically. In the early stages, standalone wind turbines with installed power between 100 and 500 kW were quite common while the development of wind farms was rare. Now, after the development of incentives and planning regimes, most installations are in farms of up to 25 or more turbines. Currently, the installed power per turbine ranges from 750 kW to 3 MW and farms totalling 50 MW are not uncommon. Wind turbines in the range of 4.5 to 6 MW are available as prototypes and test specimens but are not yet commercially exploited. keep reading…
