ABSTRACT
Wind farms are a cluster of wind turbines that are located at a site to generate electricity. In the literature, wind farms are also sometimes referred to as a "plant", "array" or a "park". The first onshore wind farm was installed in 1980 on the shoulder of Crotched Mountain in southern New Hampshire, USA. The trend in the development of wind farms has been towards increased size and numbers of wind turbines that provide an overall larger power capacity. Different approaches toward wind farm design optimization have been proposed. These started with simplified formulations that ranged from an array of equally spaced turbines, to unequally spaced turbines, to a staggered grid arrangement. When a wind turbine extracts energy from the wind, it produces a cone shaped wake of slower moving turbulent air. The wakes of the wind turbines in the farm are made visible by a low level fog cover.
