From the University of Delaware a press release I just can’t stop laughing about. Of course, they have no real-world tests of this claim, only “their sophisticated climate-weather model”. No numbers were given on turbine “mortality”, so one wonders how many would survive.
Offshore wind turbines could weaken hurricanes, reduce storm surge
Wind turbines placed in the ocean to generate electricity may have another major benefit: weakening hurricanes before the storms make landfall.
New research by the University of Delaware and Stanford University shows that an army of offshore wind turbines could reduce hurricanes’ wind speeds, wave heights and flood-causing storm surge.
The findings, published online this week in Nature Climate Change, demonstrate for the first time that wind turbines can buffer damage to coastal cities during hurricanes.
“The little turbines can fight back the beast,” said study co-author Cristina Archer, associate professor in the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment.
Archer and Stanford’s Mark Jacobson previously calculated the global potential for wind power, taking into account that as turbines are generating electricity, they are also siphoning off some energy from the atmosphere. They found that there is more than enough wind to support worldwide energy demands with a negligible effect on the overall climate.
In the new study, the researchers took a closer look at how the turbines’ wind extraction might affect hurricanes. Unlike normal weather patterns that make up global climate over the long term, hurricanes are unusual, isolated events that behave very differently. Thus, the authors hypothesized that a hurricane might be more affected by wind turbines than are normal winds.
“Hurricanes are a different animal,” Archer said.
Using their sophisticated climate-weather model, the researchers simulated hurricanes Katrina, Isaac and Sandy to examine what would happen if large wind farms, with tens of thousands of turbines, had been in the storms’ paths.
They found that, as the hurricane approached, the wind farm would remove energy from the storm’s edge and slow down the fast-moving winds. The lower wind speeds at the hurricane’s perimeter would gradually trickle inwards toward the eye of the storm. “There is a feedback into the hurricane that is really fascinating to examine,” said Archer, an expert in both meteorology and engineering.
The highest reductions in wind speed were by up to 87 mph for Hurricane Sandy and 92 mph for Hurricane Katrina.
According to the computer model, the reduced winds would in turn lower the height of ocean waves, reducing the winds that push water toward the coast as storm surge. The wind farm decreased storm surge — a key cause of hurricane flooding — by up to 34 percent for Hurricane Sandy and 79 percent for Hurricane Katrina.
While the wind farms would not completely dissipate a hurricane, the milder winds would also prevent the turbines from being damaged. Turbines are designed to keep spinning up to a certain wind speed, above which the blades lock and feather into a protective position. The study showed that wind farms would slow wind speeds so that they would not reach that threshold.
The study suggests that offshore wind farms would serve two important purposes: prevent significant damage to cities during hurricanes and produce clean energy year-round in normal conditions as well as hurricane-like conditions. This makes offshore wind farms an alterative protective measure to seawalls, which only serve one purpose and do not generate energy.
Jacobson and study co-author Willett Kempton, professor in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, weighed the costs and benefits of offshore wind farms as storm protection.
The net cost of offshore wind farms was found to be less than the net cost of generating electricity with fossil fuels. The calculations take into account savings from avoiding costs related to health issues, climate change and hurricane damage, and assume a mature offshore wind industry. In initial costs, it would be less expensive to build seawalls, but those would not reduce wind damage, would not produce electricity and would not avoid those other costs — thus the net cost of offshore wind would be less.
The study used very large wind farms, with tens of thousands of turbines, much larger than commercial wind farms today. However, sensitivity tests suggested benefits even for smaller numbers of turbines.
“This is a paradigm shift,” Kempton said. “We always think about hurricanes and wind turbines as incompatible. But we find that in large arrays, wind turbines have some ability to protect both themselves and coastal communities, from the strongest winds.”
“This is a totally different way to think about the interaction of the atmosphere and wind turbines,” Archer said. “We could actually take advantage of these interactions to protect coastal communities.”
The paper, titled “Taming Hurricanes with Arrays of Offshore Wind Turbines,” appears online on Feb. 26 in Nature Climate Change and will be published in print in March.
the total energy that hurricanes produce and subtract the potential energy that the wind turbines produce then the insignificantly small number will be the maximum reduction of the hurricanes energy. …this study is not worth the electrons to store in a word document.
NOAA estimates the total kinetic energy (wind energy) generated for a ‘mature’ hurricane with 40 m/s (90 mph) winds on a scale of 60 km radius at about 1.5 x 10^12 Watts. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html
As of April 2013, the 1,000 MW (10^9 Watts) London Array in the UK is the largest offshore wind farm in the world. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm
We would only need to park the equivalent of 1500 of these wind farms in the path of the hurricane to capture its wind energy.
Then would we / could we / should we move them for the next hurricane???
🙁
I think the primary education required for all politicians and media types is that a publication is not true just because someone published it. It may be narrowly true but inapplicable in the real world. It may be completely true but inapplicable in the real world. It may be narrowly true and useful in the real world or it may be completely true and useful in the real world.
Right now, unelected Prime Ministers (a contradiction in terms) in Ukraine can order about President Putin and the Russian speaking Crimean population about and the western media call him a Prime Minister (when what he is is an unelected mountebank). The armed Russian speakers who stormed the Crimean Parliament (just as violent mobs stormed the Ukrainian parliament in Kyiv) are, however, referred to as ‘gunmen’, not ‘protestors’. The only difference is that they want ties with Russia, not the EU. Good journalism would reflect that. The British media has wheeled out Goebbels again to go into propaganda mode, just as they did for Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lewis Carroll would find much primary material for re-writing his classic children’s’ books right now……..
Perhaps it would be most healthy if people removed the exalted assumption of dispassionate service which scientists are supposed to give to society?? Then they would just focus on the paper and not get outraged that it wasn’t tickety boo.
We don’t assume politicians to be decent, we don’t assume bankers to be decent, we don’t assume the media to be decent.
Why should we assume that scientists are??
Oh my GOD! Maybe building huge walls of wind turbines around the University of Delaware and Stanford prevent crap like this from leaking out.
Even if you had a wind farm that was in theory large enough to sap a significant amount of energy from a hurricane, they would be ripped to pieces long before they could make any difference. Then on top of all the wind and storm surge, you would have all those wind turbine blades coming on shore at 90+ mph. I wonder how many houses it would take to stop one of those blades at that kind of velocity?
And there will be absolutely no environmental impacts of having thousands or millions of windmills out in the ocean. No rusting parts falling into the water? Salt water is not corrosive, is it? They will have to make all parts out of expensive corrosion resistant metals. What about leaks of lubricating oils, etc. from the windmills? What about all the dead sea birds? Will the noise from vibrations be harmful to whales? All the things these fools normally worry about now seem not to matter.
Will they suddenly move thousands of turbines into the path of a hurricane after they figure out where it’s headed?? I’d like to meet the sponsors of those turbines cuz I have some research proposals for them.
Using their sophisticated climate-weather model, the researchers simulated hurricanes Katrina, Isaac and Sandy to examine what would happen if large wind farms, with tens of thousands of turbines, had been in the storms’ paths.
I can tell them precisely what would happen.
They would have had tens of thousands of busted turbines to clear up.
Mind you, as I’m an engineer, my opinion is entirely worthless to Ivory Tower dwellers.
So how does one ‘grow wind’ at a ‘wind farm’?
ferdberple asks “What other machines built of metal are able to do this for long without failure?”
Answer: turbines and alternators in a hydroelectric power station. These can come on line almost instantaneously. We had a look over some of the Snowy River Generation Plants. The engineers in charge told us that they could tell to within a few seconds when “A Country Practice” – a favourite TV show at the time – finished as hundreds of thousands of people got up to put the kettle on. As demand shot up, voltage went down and the turbines opened up to restore power. Alternators went from rotating at normal frequency with no power being generated (hence cool) to full power in seconds with no warm up. Hot in a few minutes.
SasjaL says:
February 27, 2014 at 1:59 am
“Why not invest in real problems? In US there are the San Andrea Fault and Yellowstone that should be addressed. Not much that can be done when nature act, but pre damage control is better than the political collateral damage solution that’s used …”
Answer: So far as the San Andreas fault is concerned, there are two ready made solutions. One is to drill hundreds of wells along the fault, and then, all of a sudden, pump thousands of tonnes of water down at high pressure. This will lubricate the fault so that the plates slip easily past each other, and since the movement would be preprogrammed, everybody would be in a safe place and there would be no deaths from the destruction – which would be minimal as the movement would be a gentle sliding and not a pulsating juddering. The other way is to lower a few spare tactical nuclear weapons down the drill holes and do the same.
For Yellowstone, it is even simpler. Drill many holes and pipe down water, which will turn into steam at high pressure, cooling the magma until it solidifies, and improves the strength of the crust. However, leave one area in the centre a few miles across, and bury a Hydrogen Bomb in the middle about 10 miles down. Detonate this, the resulting shock will create so much disturbed rock that pressure will be lowered, even if only for a few seconds, and this will result in the magma in this area becoming less viscous – something like that paint that is solid till disturbed, but liquefies when a brush in put in it – and this will create a volcano to release the pressure, and prevent Yellowstone erupting as a super volcano.
To deal with hurricanes, and typhoons, simply put a few hundred thousand windmills on the ocean, just off shore. They will such so much energy from the winds that – Oh No – someone has already thought of this!
As for wind turbines taming hurricanes, doncha think it’s a bit too late because hurricanes have not increased nor intensified over last several years. I can’t imagine putting grid full of offshore turbines in the paths of hurricanes seeing them get destroyed in the process. The unintended consequence would see higher electricity prices because idiots were dumb enough to put wind turbines in the path of hurricanes.
I’d it’s a crash and burn proposal.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/02/15/article-0-0F1B58C900000578-404_634x423.jpg
The U.K. has nothing like what the U.S. have when it comes to hurricanes in our area.
Nigel in Waterloo says:
February 27, 2014 at 7:49 am
Put very large wind mills on ships with a very large undersea cable to get the trons back to the mainline!
Think of all the extra economic activity.
Oh wait that was sorta proposed with different power of Jax Fl.
Answer: So far as the San Andreas fault is concerned, there are two ready made solutions. One is to drill hundreds of wells along the fault, and then, all of a sudden, pump thousands of tonnes of water down at high pressure. This will lubricate the fault so that the plates slip easily past each other, and since the movement would be preprogrammed, everybody would be in a safe place and there would be no deaths from the destruction – which would be minimal as the movement would be a gentle sliding and not a pulsating juddering. The other way is to lower a few spare tactical nuclear weapons down the drill holes and do the same….
Wan’t that the idea behind a James Bond movie but at a different part of CA with a different outcome?
And I still keep asking my dentist for stainless steel teeth!
No more than mathematical head wanking.
IF you build TENS of thousands of wind turbines AND they happen to intersect the path of a hurricane, THEN the costs of building the things is less than electricity generated PLUS hurricane damage avoided PLUS the benefits of avoiding catastrophic global warming. Oh, and the turbines won’t go into feathered mode because they will have succeeded in reducing wind speeds to the optimum levels.
What planet do these clowns live on?
The first thought that came to my mind when I read “From the University of Delaware press release” was that the backers of Maryland governor Martin O’Malley’s offshore wind farm were funding this study. The second thought was that the authors of this study really had no idea of the force of a hurricane.
A couple of thoughts on this:
First, in order to prevent a hurricane from forming, the wind farm needs to be located far off-shore where most Atlantic hurricanes form. That isn’t going to happen.
Second, it is not at all clear that a hurricane, once formed, will even lose wind speed as it crosses a frictional surface such as land or a wind farm array. It depends on whether the hurricane can still access moisture. Certainly an offshore wind farm (with a footprint that is much smaller than the hurricane) will allow plenty of access to warm surface waters. I doubt that a 100,000 turbine wind farm’s impact on hurricane wind speed can even be measured.
Third, wind speed increases with height. Larger wind turbines will experience much larger max wind speeds c/w surface winds, and much larger damaging wind speed differentials between blade tips.
Fourth, flooding from storm surge and rainfall are responsible for the bulk of the storm damage. A wind farm within 100 km of the shore will have essentially no impact on hurricane storm surge or rainfall total. Sandy was a recent example of a hurricane that weakened to a TS as it came ashore. The storm surge was much higher than that of a TS.
Just quickly checking two hurricanes from our joyous 2004 Florida season, as hurricane Charley crossed over western Cuba (about 50 km of land) it strengthened from a cat 2 to cat 3. Hurricane Jeanne went from a TS to a cat 1 as it crossed over 100 km of hilly (more than 250 m high) regions in the eastern end of the Dominican Republic.
Ummm, wow. Does this mean we need to install millions/billions along all coasts prone to hurricanes? How will poor countries view the rich if we don’t help them first?
I think we should just get rid of the moon. It would remove tides and would therefore reduce flooding right across the globe.
We really gotta think big.
Lol. Nuff said.
And when this off-shore destabilization of low pressure systems results in more rain at sea and less rain over land (where the systems have often destabilized on the past as they come ashore) will the PPOPER anthropogenic effect be blamed for the decreased precipitation?
Their paper sounds like something out of a time warp–from the heyday of greenie tech utopianism a dozen years ago.
Let’s see. The area of an array of wind turbines vs hurricane Andrew? First let’s look at the world’s largest wind farm in UK as seen from space which covers 40 square miles.
http://www.livescience.com/42741-london-wind-farm-photo.html
The eye of hurricane Andrew was 10 miles wide or 100 square miles while the rest of the hurricane was 400 miles wide or roughly 160,000 square miles which is 4,000 times larger than the wind turbine array in UK.
Humbling thoughts.
From the NOAA website:
One can look at the energetics of a hurricane in two ways:
the total amount of energy released by the condensation of water droplets or …
the amount of kinetic energy generated to maintain the strong swirling winds of the hurricane (Emanuel 1999).
It turns out that the vast majority of the heat released in the condensation process is used to cause rising motions in the thunderstorms and only a small portion drives the storm’s horizontal winds.
Method 1) – Total energy released through cloud/rain formation:
5.2 x 1019 Joules/day or
6.0 x 1014 Watts.
This is equivalent to 200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity – an incredible amount of energy produced!
Method 2) – Total kinetic energy (wind energy) generated:
1.3 x 1017 Joules/day or
1.5 x 1012Watts.
This is equivalent to about half the world-wide electrical generating capacity – also an amazing amount of energy being produced!
Can you say pimple on an elephants ass?
Hey, look at all the polluting gasses coming from the turbines in the picture.
Can’t be good for the environment.
(Half sarc.)
A video of a wind turbine destroyed by wind and it wasn’t even anywhere near hurricane windspeed.
@Vince Causey says:
February 27, 2014 at 8:03 am
Well, this isn’t just mathematical head wanking. The third author, W. Kempton, is the Research Director for UD’s Center for Carbon-free Power Integration. So, I presume, he manages a bit of funding that is mostly extracted from our (the US taxpayer) pockets. Look at the funding sources listed in the article – NSF and NASA. But wait, this isn’t just waste of money this is, also, waste of some other (hopefully better) research opportunities as this subpar work took a fraction of very thinly spread funding pie.