(Bloomberg) -- Turning a turbine just slightly away from the prevailing wind can boost output from a farm by as much as 47% when breezes are minimal.
The adjustment steers how the wind comes off one blade and into the next, according to the results of a 10-day test conducted at a TransAlta Corp. wind farm in Alberta by a Stanford University research team. In normal wind conditions, pushing the wind wake in slightly different directions boosted production by as much as 13%.
Turbulence from these wind-wakes can place extra strain on the blades and increase maintenance costs. Managing the air flow of upwind turbines can reduce stress as well as provide more power, John Dabiri, a professor and lead author of the study, said in an interview. The software his group developed to improve wind farm performance can be run on a laptop, he said.
βThe potential gains are so significant that this should be rapidly deployed,β Dabiri said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Martin in New York at cmartin11@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Reg Gale, Joe Ryan
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