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.
In a new paper published March 14 in the journal Wind Energy Science, a team led by Dave Rosencrans, a doctoral student, and Julie K. Lundquist, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences, estimate that offshore wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean region, where the U.S. plans to build large wind farms, could take away wind from other turbines nearby, potentially reducing the farms' power output by more than 30%. Accounting for this so-called "Wake effect," the team estimated that the proposed wind farms could still supply approximately 60% of the electricity demand of the New England grid, which covers Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
"The U.S. is planning to build thousands of offshore wind turbines, so we need to predict when those wakes will be expensive and when they have little effect," said Lundquist, who is also a fellow at CU Boulder's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute.
Using computer simulations and observational data of the atmosphere, the team calculated that the wake effect reduces total power generation by 34% to 38% at a proposed wind farm off the East Coast.
Compared with energy sources derived from fossil fuels, wind and solar power tend to be variable, because the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.
To better understand how the wind blows in the proposed wind farm area, Lundquist's team visited islands off the New England coast and installed a host of instruments last December as part of the Department of Energy's Wind Forecast Improvement Project 3.
Wind is the perfect imperfect energy for the grid, and offshore wind more so.
https://www.masterresource.org/offshore-windpower-issues/offshore-wind-wake-effect/
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