Wind Turbines and Energy Efficiency

The recalculations of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry show that more wind turbines don’t mean more energy efficiency, reversing earlier surveys.

In 2014 only 3% of the energy produced worldwide came from the wind parks. In Germany, the wind energy reached 9.7% during the same period. The figures come from a recent survey carried out by the German Institute Fraunhofer. Moreover, researchers from the German Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in cooperation with US and French researchers tried to calculate in concreto the performance of wind energy.

According to the findings of the study the use of air as an energy source for producing electricity is less effective than it was previously thought. According to previous studies there could be produced up to seven watt per square meter, however, the recent research lowers the bar of expectations at one watt.

Dr. Axel Kleidon, head of the research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, explains: "The atmosphere drives the winds near the surface with surprisingly little energy. The more wind turbines avoid this energy, the more the wind will therefore slowed. The combination of these two effects means that wind turbines can generate significantly less energy in large wind farms as a turbine standing isolated. "

Dr. Lee Miller, an employee of the Max Planck Institute and author of the study says: "If we take into account only a few wind turbines, we find what we expect: more turbines generate more electricity. Once we introduce a lot more turbines, but shows that the wind speed is progressively reduced and each turbine generates less energy.

The larger the wind farm is, the more parameters have to be taken into consideration.

Source: elektroniknet.de