http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/25/wind-farms-weather.html
Voor alle hippies die geloven in windmolens:
Mega wind farms of the future could have a major impact on weather, clearing up cloudy skies and even steering storm systems, according to new research.
In the United States, wind power still only accounts for a little over 1 percent of electricity generation. But the industry is growing fast, from 17 gigawatts of installed capacity at the end of 2007 to 21 through the end of September.
And the U.S. Department of Energy is upping the ante even further, with plans for the country to generate 20 percent of its electricity through wind by 2030. Wind turbines could soon be carpeting the countryside wherever there is a steady breeze.
To find out what effects, if any, large scale wind farms might have on wind patterns, Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland concocted an experiment. They took the pattern of expanding turbine fields to an extreme, and used a computer model to calculate what might happen if all the land from Texas to central Canada, and from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains were covered in one massive wind farm.
Voor alle hippies die geloven in windmolens:
Mega wind farms of the future could have a major impact on weather, clearing up cloudy skies and even steering storm systems, according to new research.
In the United States, wind power still only accounts for a little over 1 percent of electricity generation. But the industry is growing fast, from 17 gigawatts of installed capacity at the end of 2007 to 21 through the end of September.
And the U.S. Department of Energy is upping the ante even further, with plans for the country to generate 20 percent of its electricity through wind by 2030. Wind turbines could soon be carpeting the countryside wherever there is a steady breeze.
To find out what effects, if any, large scale wind farms might have on wind patterns, Daniel Barrie and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff of the University of Maryland concocted an experiment. They took the pattern of expanding turbine fields to an extreme, and used a computer model to calculate what might happen if all the land from Texas to central Canada, and from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains were covered in one massive wind farm.
