Offshore Wind “Wake Effect”
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 30, 2024
The media bias in favor of industrial wind turbines is a sight to behold. Simple reporting of the facts, from costs to environmental tradeoffs, could inform the public and voters to quite possibly eliminate the government gravy train that disadvantages virtually all of us. That is, everyone except for wind developers and other constituencies of the Climate Industrial Complex.
It is uncommon to see a break in the narrative of “the energy transition.” This was recently done at E&E News’s Energywire, “‘Wake effect’ could drain 38% of offshore wind power, study says“. This piece by Heather Richards (May 5, 2024) is worth revisiting at length. Key quotations follow:
The findings from national lab and university researchers upend assumptions about how turbines interact with each other.
Wind turbines off the East Coast might significantly drain energy from each other, lowering the power output of an offshore farm by up to 38 percent, according to a new study that challenges early assumptions about the nascent industry’s electricity contribution.
The findings add to growing research about the “wake effect,” which is when offshore turbines in close proximity affect each other’s energy output.
Researchers from the University of Colorado and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found that entire wind farms can impede neighboring projects, decreasing the power production of adjacent farms by up to 15 percent under some conditions.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/05/31/offshore-wind-wake-effect/
