Post by Donna Quixote on Mar 19, 2013 6:52:18 GMT -4
University of North Carolina suggests Scientists have overestimated capacity of wind farms to generate power
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – March 18, 2013 – People think of wind as an energy source with few limits, offering an unending power source with distinct capacity advantages over sources that deplete, such as fossil fuel.
Yet, new research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling by UNC Charlotte’s Amanda S. Adams and Harvard University’s David W. Keith, published Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the power capacity of large-scale wind farms may have been significantly overestimated.
With large-scale wind farms, as many as hundreds of turbines mounted on tall towers and connected to the electrical grid capture the kinetic energy of the wind. Each wind turbine creates a “wind shadow” behind it, in which the turning blades slow the air. In an effort to reduce the impact of the wind shadows, wind farms space the turbines apart, while still locating as many turbines as they can on the land.
Current estimates of the global wind power resource over land range from 56 to 400 terawatts. Most of these estimates assume implicitly that the turbines extracting the wind energy have little impact on the atmosphere and, therefore, little effect on the energy production.
Link to story here....
quixoteslaststand.com/2013/03/19/university-of-north-carolina-suggests-scientists-have-overestiated-capacity-of-wind-farms-to-generate-power/
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – March 18, 2013 – People think of wind as an energy source with few limits, offering an unending power source with distinct capacity advantages over sources that deplete, such as fossil fuel.
Yet, new research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling by UNC Charlotte’s Amanda S. Adams and Harvard University’s David W. Keith, published Monday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the power capacity of large-scale wind farms may have been significantly overestimated.
With large-scale wind farms, as many as hundreds of turbines mounted on tall towers and connected to the electrical grid capture the kinetic energy of the wind. Each wind turbine creates a “wind shadow” behind it, in which the turning blades slow the air. In an effort to reduce the impact of the wind shadows, wind farms space the turbines apart, while still locating as many turbines as they can on the land.
Current estimates of the global wind power resource over land range from 56 to 400 terawatts. Most of these estimates assume implicitly that the turbines extracting the wind energy have little impact on the atmosphere and, therefore, little effect on the energy production.
Link to story here....
quixoteslaststand.com/2013/03/19/university-of-north-carolina-suggests-scientists-have-overestiated-capacity-of-wind-farms-to-generate-power/