The ‘wake effect’ steals wind from downwind turbines.
Wind turbines may be a hopelessly inadequate source of energy, but as fiascos go, the rush to install them has led to some grimly entertaining moments. Highlights have included the Dunkelflaute wind drought debacle (a seasonal favorite), the “no bid” auctions, and the occasional collapse. Now we have . . . wind wars.
The Daily Telegraph:
It’s a familiar dilemma: you’ve bagged yourself a home with uninterrupted views and then someone else comes along and spoils it. Or maybe a tree in the garden next door has grown so tall it is blocking out your sunlight.
How can you amicably resolve this dispute with your neighbour?
This is the question facing wind farm developers across the North Sea today, as their neighbourhood becomes increasingly crowded.
Yet in this case it’s not the views that are being ruined, but the wind — and the stakes are significantly higher.
Through a phenomenon quaintly described as the “wake effect” by academics, Britain’s biggest wind farm owners fear the wind is literally being taken out of their sails.
It is a problem that threatens to cost the likes of Ørsted, RWE, Scottish Power, Total and Equinor billions of pounds without resolution, with the companies waging war in the planning system over who will take precedence — and who picks up the bill.
Flustered industry insiders have even coined a term for it: wind theft.
Apparently, there is only so much seabed that can accommodate this “unlimited” resource. And the larger the turbines and the wind farms grow, the greater the wake effect, which can be felt over miles.
The Daily Telegraph:
Equinor, a leading partner in the giant Dogger Bank wind farm development in the North Sea, said wake effects were a serious threat to future developments.
“These effects are too often underestimated,” a spokesman says.
The tension building over wake conflicts is so great that it could undermine Miliband’s plans to turbocharge offshore wind capacity.
Say it ain’t so. Surely the central planners had thought this all through. Surely.
The U.K. has already installed 2,800 wind turbines offshore. Its climate commissar, Ed Miliband, set on seeing even more good money thrown after bad, wants this number to be tripled, meaning that this problem is not going away.