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The use of wind power continues to soar around the world. In 2008 the U.S. actually surpassed Germany as the world’s top producer of energy from wind. It might seem that there aren’t many improvements to make to what’s essentially a passive technology. But researchers at the California Institute of Technology say the way fish school will help create more efficient designs for wind farms. They presented their research at a meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics.
When fish swim, they leave little swirling vortices in their wake. By swimming together in a school, they can transfer energy to one another through these vortices. Wind behaves much as a liquid does. So the engineers have taken wind turbines that spin on vertical axes—these are different from the traditional horizontal wind turbine mostly in use today. On a computer, they’ve positioned the turbines close enough together that as one spins, it then directs the wind to its neighbor.
According to the computer model, this design could increase wind farm efficiency a hundredfold. The next step for the researchers is to do a field test, trying out these fish dynamics on dry land.
—Cynthia Graber
[The above text is an exact transcript of the audio in the podcast.]
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4 Comments
Add Commentactually i benefit a lot from here i'd like to keep on listening those 60 seconds news everyday
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMigrating birds fly in formation in order to use lift more efficiently. Would it not be more efficient to build a single wind turbine that contained multiple wind turbines within it? Each could use the other's lift, making each turbine of turbines hundreds of times more efficient, no?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfurphy that would work except for the fact that turbines dont fly like a bird and thus do not need lift their stationary on the ground
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd really like to read the actual study. Currently we are getting 35-45% efficiency out of HAWTs. A hundred fold increase (i.e 100x, or even 10x) in efficiency would mean 4500-450% efficiency... 100% = 100/100 or unity. So congratulations on violating physics. I really respect scientific american, but you can't say that something will have 100x the current efficiency. The Betz limit is a mathematical maximum limit for wind turbines. The maximum possible energy capture from wind (ignoring any mechanical losses) is .59 (59%). Please re-read this post.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn reality HAWTs are, and always will be,more efficient than VAWTs. So I say BS, but if someone can send me the actual study I would love to read it.
-h