The Next Airbender
More energy through dynamic control over the wind flow inside an offshore wind farm.
“Wind turbines love a steady, constant, homogenous wind flow pattern. A wind turbine extracts energy from the wind. The wind pattern it leaves behind, downwind, is rather messy and turbulent. This is called the wake. Suppose a second wind turbine captures the wind in the wake of the first one. In that case, it will generate much less energy: Because the energy content of the wind is already significantly reduced and because the turbulence reduces the turbine’s efficiency to capture this energy.” Says Jan-Willem van Wingerden, full professor at the Technical University of Delft, on Data Driven Control, Wind Turbine and Wind Farm Control. “We’ve developed a way to control the wind flow inside a wind farm and increase the combined energy yield of all turbines.”
