While saying goodbye to fossil fuels, humanity is slowly starting to adopt renewable energy. At the center of renewable energy are the sun and wind. Although the efficiency of these two types of energy is limited for now, experts continue to work on this issue.
A small change can significantly increase wind farm efficiency
Scientists have announced that they have found a way to make wind farms more efficient. With this method, while the efficiency of wind farms increases, the biggest advantage is that there is no need for an extra investment.
The world’s largest offshore wind farm is being built!
The wind farm, which will be established off the coast of England, will produce 3.6 gigawatts of electricity and power 6 million homes.
Wind turbines operate as independent units controlled. Systems only maximize their power generation. A working wind turbine, on the other hand, can affect others with the turbulence it creates, causing a decrease in efficiency. If positioning the wind turbines far from each other is a solution, this will increase costs and is also far from practical.
Michael F. Howland, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental engineering at MIT, advocates optimizing wind turbines collectively rather than individually. Speaking based on real-world tests in India, the scientist reveals that a wind farm’s energy production can be increased if individual turbines are optimized and the wind flow is modeled en masse.
Howland thinks that the turbines working together will work much more efficiently, thus producing energy more efficiently. As a result of the studies, it is stated that the efficiency of the wind farm will increase up to 32 percent under suitable conditions with a central control system.
On the other hand, even an overall energy improvement of 1.2 percent is estimated to generate more than 31 terawatt-hours of additional electricity per year when the world’s existing wind turbines are powered by this system. This amount is equivalent to the operation of approximately 3,600 wind turbines. Considering the financial dimension of the business, it means an extra income of approximately 950 million dollars for wind farms.
The proposed system has the potential to be useful in any geographic location. The fact that there is no need for any other system other than a software change for this study stands out as another advantage. Another important point is to save space with wind turbines that will be located more frequently.
In line with this study, work has already begun. So what do you think about wind farms? You can share your views with us in the comments section.