Potential New Design for Wind Farms

A few weeks back Science Daily had a good article a few weeks back on improved wind farm designs. Typically wind farms are designed so that each turbine is spaced a certain distance apart from each other. Research over 30 years ago had provided those guidelines but the California Institute of Technology has done some new research and it may show that placing the turbines closer together may provide overall system gains. This would significantly help in the development of wind farms as the current line of thinking was that improvements would come from larger turbines. With these larger turbines the complexity of the projects has gone up as well the cost.

John Dabiri, professor of Engineering and Applied Science.

"Because conventional, propeller-style wind turbines must be spaced far apart to avoid interfering with one another aerodynamically, much of the wind energy that enters a wind farm is never tapped. In effect, modern wind farms are the equivalent of 'sloppy eaters.' To compensate, they're built taller and larger to access better winds."

John Dabiri, professor of Engineering and Applied Science, and director of the Center for Bioinspired Engineering at Caltech describes his new design in American Institute of Physics' Journal of Renewable & Sustainable Energy. The core point is that wind at 30 feet high has more than enough energy potential to meet our power needs. By using vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) the turbines can be placed much closer to each other. Even each individually may not be as efficient as taller horizontal style they can be placed much closer to each other which may result in a larger portion of the energy being harvested. VAWT’s are also cheaper to operate and maintain. More research is planned to prove out how efficient this design is.