According to the newspaper, some Belgian wind farms located southwest of the Dutch, take up to 3 percent. energy produced in neighbors, what “creates the risk of future conflicts for air currents“.
“It is hard to call wind theft. This is Wake Effect, which is the effect of an aerodynamic trace in wind energy, known and described by scientists phenomenon” – explains Dr. Tomasz Harackiewicz, director of the Wind Energy Maritime Center at the Maritime University in Gdynia.
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As he emphasized, in order to drive a turbine, the wind must give it kinetic energy, which turns into electricity, which causes a decrease in wind speed.
“This is not only a matter of energy given to turbine blades, but also turbulent turbulences that can pull in kilometers and change the direction of the wind. This is Wake Effect,” said the expert and added that if the wind turbines are in the line, then the wind is weakening with each subsequent one.
The air flowing through the wind turbine loses the speed and produces turbulence, which can negatively affect the windmills behind it, and this reduces the energy efficiency of subsequent devices. As you can read on the Renovables.blog website, when the turbine is exposed to a low -speed wind, it produces less electricity, and besides, “turbulent flow may increase the mechanical wear of the shoulder blades, shortening their life.”
“This happens on every wind farm, where the turbines are relatively close to each other. In addition, e.g. 100 turbines accumulated on one wind farm may affect the functioning of other wind farms” – emphasized Halackiewicz.
The effect of an aerodynamic trace may be smaller or larger depending on the number of turbines, their height, spatula spans and turbines on the farm. It also depends on the standard wind directions on a given water and distance between individual wind farms.
Remco Verzijlbergh, an expert of the Dutch Weather Forecasting website, talked about the effects of this physical phenomenon.
“Behind the wind farm with many wind turbines close together, you can really see lower wind speeds” – he argued in an interview with the Belgian TV station Vrt Verzijlbergh.
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In his opinion, The current setting of Belgian farms brings Dutch losses, and taking into account the increase in the number of wind farms in the North Sea “will be more and more wind“.
According to “Times”, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and Luxembourg agreed to create in the North Sea the largest marine wind energy zone in the world. By 2030, all these countries are to generate 120 GW power in the North Sea. They currently reach a level of 30 GW.
