New Scientist: Weather hots up under wind farms
Wind farms can change the weather, according to a model of how these forests of giant turbines interact with the local atmosphere. And the idea is backed up by observations from real wind farms. Somnath Baidya Roy from Princeton University, and his colleagues modelled a hypothetical wind farm consisting of a 100 by 100 array of wind turbines, each 100 metres tall and set 1 kilometre apart. They placed the virtual farm in the Great Plains region of the US, an area suitable for large wind farms, and modelled the climate using data from Oklahoma.…At 3 am the average wind speed in Oklahoma is 3.5 metres per second, but it increased to around 5 m/s in the model wind farm. The model also suggested that the temperature would increase by around 2°C underneath the 10,000 turbines. Over the course of a day this averages out to an increase in ground-level wind speed of around 0.6 m/s and a rise in temperature of around 0.7°C.
Yes, that's right, so-called wind farms affect the climate. It's basic thermodynamics. You never get something for nothing. Entropy increases. Wind farms powerstations, like everything else, have an impact on the planet. And anyone who thinks wind powerstations are the answer hasn't understood the question.
It turns out Don Quixote wasn't so stupid after all.
nothing