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Increase power output of wind farms tenfold by optimizing turbine placement

Vertical axis wind turbinesThe power output of wind farms can be increased by an order of magnitude—at least tenfold—simply by optimizing the placement of turbines on a given plot of land, say researchers at the California Institute of Technology who have been conducting a unique field study at an experimental two-acre wind farm in northern Los Angeles County.

A paper, detailing out the findings of this path breaking study was recently published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. For this study, Dabiri worked on his farmhouse exclusively for some time. He installed Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWT) because they have vertical rotors that look more like egg beaters; the Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs) looked like fans. These turbines were 10 meter tall and had 1.2-meter wide axis. For this particular study, six such VAWTs were used in the field laboratory.

Dabiri used these different turbines after closely observing the HAWTs, which are generally installed in modern farms. The HAWTs actually take a lot of space since the blades of these turbines are huge and hence they need to be installed at a fair distance from other so that the blades may not touch each other. In this process, a lot of wind energy that can be trapped goes wasted. Besides, blades of all these turbines move in same direction, which is again counterproductive.

To counter this, designers make taller turbines and bigger blades but that leads to problems of air pollution and bird killing and hence the solution lies in making shorter turbines with increased efficiency. This can be done by installing VAWTs and by rotating them in opposite direction from their neighbor turbines.

Daibri reached this conclusion by measuring the rotating speed and power generated by each turbine, when arranged in different permutations. The tests showed when all the turbines were installed with the distance of four turbines diameter, which was around 5 meters, it completely eliminated the aerodynamic interference with the close by turbines and led to more power generation. It is hoped that these new turbines will generate more electricity and will be less intrusive for the environment.

Via: California Institute of Technology [Press Release]

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