29th April 2021 10:55 am 29th April 2021 10:55 am
Windfarms with turbines that rotate on an upright axis could transform the wind sector, a new study has found.
Image: Oxford Brookes University
Based on over 11,500 hours of computer simulation, the research from Oxford Brookes University found that Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) boost each other’s performance when clustered together, with grouped pairs seeing a 15 per cent rise in output. This is in contrast to the more traditional Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs), which produce turbulence that affects the performance of other HAWTs downwind.
“Modern wind farms are one of the most efficient ways to generate green energy, however, they have one major flaw: as the wind approaches the front row of turbines, turbulence will be generated downstream,” said lead author of the study, Joachim Toftegaard Hansen, and engineering graduate at Oxford Brookes.