Researchers suggest large offshore wind farms will control hurricanes

Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering along with his colleagues of Stanford and the University of Delaware has found out a very interesting fact in their recent study of hurricane winds and offshore wind turbines. The researched revealed that deadly hurricane wind speeds can be slowed down and huge storm force can reduced with the installation of offshore wind farms.  The turbine blades of the wind farms can deplete the strength of a hurricane by slowing down the outer rotating winds of the spinning rotating storm. This leads to smaller waves which increases the central pressure and slows the winds of the hurricane and thus it vanishes much faster.

Based on a computer model, the researchers worked to simulate hurricane collisions with a huge array of offshore wind turbines. Simulation runs were based on real-life cases such as 2012 Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Isaac in New York and New Orleans, and Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005. In Katrina’s case, a total of 78,000 wind turbines off the coast of New Orleans decreased the storm strength by up to 71 percent slowing the simulated wind speeds by 130 kilometers per hour. The study revealed by these simulations suggest that wind farms are a much better option than traditional coastal defense systems such as seawalls. They are expensive to install whereas such large scale wind farms can easily pay for themselves through energy generation over the course of time.

Via: IEEE Spectrum