Huge wind turbine farm could cut hurricane wind and storm surge damage

[Capt Worley PE]

Research from Stanford University in California holds out hope for hurricane protection that's better and cheaper than a seawall.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change, uses computer models to estimate the reduction in hurricane winds and storm surge that results from installing huge wind turbine farms.

For example, had there been 78,000 turbines spread across a wide swath of Louisiana coastline when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, the turbines would have reduced the wind speed by between 80 and 98 mph and the storm surge by 79 percent, the study showed.

For Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York and New Jersey in 2012, the model projected a wind speed reduction of 78 to 87 mph and up to 34 percent decrease in storm surge.

Lead author on the study is Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, Calif. Co-authors are Cristina Archer and Willett Kempton of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-weather/hurricanes/article/Study-Huge-wind-turbine-farm-could-cut-hurricane-5269675.php?cmpid=hpts

78,000 turbines?????

 

[Dexman PE PMP]

A completely ignorant question here: Have they actually proven that wind turbines significantly reduce wind speed? Sure some disruption of the wind is necessary to offset the minor friction losses of the turbine motor, but I don't think anything of that magnitude would be possible unless you had turbines in place with specifically higher resistance (read: fans blowing the opposite direction).

 

[snickerd3]

^ I was thinking the same thing...modeling vs real world don't always line up