We've all heard of squabbles over downstream water rights.
It turns out that wind is being disputed in a similar way.
‘It's not just about the energy given to the turbine blades, but also the turbulence created behind them, which can stretch for miles and change the wind direction. This is what the 'wake effect' is about,' Dr. Tomasz Harackiewicz, director of the Offshore Wind Energy Centre at the Maritime University in Gdynia, said, adding that if wind turbines are aligned, with each successive one, the wind weakens.
Remco Verzijlbergh, a specialist at the Dutch weather forecasting company Whiffle, accused the Belgians of placing their wind farms in such a way that their wake effect has robbed the Dutch from the wind needed to power their turbines.
Not only do the wind turbines' wakes steal the wind out of the other's turbines' sails, they also are being shown to affect meteorological and atmospheric conditions.
Both in situ and satellite observations have suggested that nocturnal surface temperatures increase in the vicinity of wind plants as wind turbines mix warmer air from aloft down to the surface.
That's literal global warming right there!
The UK, Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, and Luxembourg have all agreed to create the world's largest offshore wind farm by 2030.
I was told that there was so much renewable wind on the planet that we could build all the wind farms we wanted and there would be zero consequences.
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