Wind speed reductions by large-scale wind turbine deployments lower turbine efficiencies and set low generation limits.

ABSTRACT: Wind turbines generate electricity by removing kinetic energy from the atmosphere. Large numbers of wind turbines are likely to reduce wind speeds, which lowers estimates of electricity generation from what would be presumed from unaffected conditions. Here, we test how well wind power limits that account for this effect can be estimated without explicitly simulating atmospheric dynamics. We first use simulations with an atmospheric general circulation model (GCM) that explicitly simulates the effects of wind turbines to derive wind power limits (GCM estimate), and compare them to a simple approach derived from the climatological conditions without turbines [vertical kinetic energy (VKE) estimate]. On land, we find strong agreement between the VKE and GCM estimates with respect to electric

SUBMITTER: Miller LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5137733 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature