Can Wind Farms Steal Each Other’s Energy?
With the development of technology, the need for energy is increasing at a very high pace. Enough methods should be there in order to generate energy and cater the power requirements of the world. Wind power is growing faster than ever. According to several scientists, it is even possible to have so many wind turbines, which can steal each other’s wind. Now you may wonder how on earth this can happen. The above mentioned scenario has been proven from scientists, so it is worth to pay our attention towards that.
During the past few decades, some sailboat captains have experience a similar phenomenon and they have named it “dirty air”. When you are sailing the direct downwind of another sailboat on sea, you will experience a slowdown in the speed. It is because the leading sailboat creates a vortex of air when the wind spills off its sails. Therefore, sailors often consider dirty air as reduced power.
From the scientific experiments, it has been identified that blades in wind turbines also give life to dirty air. This can be considered as the main reason why engineers keep a considerable amount of space in between them. However, this method will not be practical due to the significant rise of wind turbines. In order to cater the increasing demand for power in United States, the number of required wind turbines have to be increased from 45,000 to 100,000. If they increase the wind turbines to 100,000, all the wind turbines will have to experience the negative effects of dirty air.
The answer to this question has become a puzzle for all the atmospheric scientists out there in United States. That is the reason why scientists spend a lot of time and money on looking for the saturation point of wind. When the wind exceeds its saturation point, it will get dirty, so that there is no point in creating a new wind turbine. Unfortunately, that point is still a hypothetical one. Some scientists say that the amount of wind turbines that exist in US are not enough to be used in calculating the saturation point of wind.
The only practical solution available at the moment to get rid of this condition is to spread out the wind farms as much as possible. This can reduce the impact that they create on each other. But creates the inevitable problem of where? And how much?
