Wind Farms Found to Affect Weather

Wind Farms Found to Affect Weather

Nov 04 - United Press International

A Princeton University researcher has determined large-scale wind farms can change the weather during the night.

Somnath Baidya Roy from Princeton University, and his colleagues modeled a hypothetical wind farm consisting of a 100 by 100 array of wind turbines, each 100 yards tall and set .66 miles apart. They placed the farm in the Great Plains region of the United States, which would be a suitable area for a wind farm.

During the day, the model showed very little weather effect, because the warmth of the sun mixes the lower layers of the atmosphere. But at night, when the atmosphere is stiller, the wind turbines have a significant effect, drawing down warmer air.

The findings are backed by real observations. Neil Kelley, a meteorologist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., has gathered data from a wind farm in California.

Although the wind farm was more dense and the turbines smaller we still found that the turbines tended to pull down heat and momentum from above, particularly during the night-time hours, he said.

The research is published in this week's New Scientist.

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