Offshore Wind Farms Could Knock Down Hurricanes

[n2doc]

By Mark Fischetti

Hurricanes are unstoppable, right? Apparently not. An intriguing new computer simulation shows that 78,000 large wind turbines spread across 35,000 square kilometers of ocean outside of New Orleans would have cut Hurricane Katrina’s category 3 winds at landfall by 129 to 158 kilometers per hour (80 to 98 miles per hour) and reduced the storm surge by 79 percent. The same collection of turbines offshore of New York City would have dropped Hurricane Sandy’s winds by 125 to 140 kph and the surge by up to 34 percent.

That sounds impressive. But wait…78,000 turbines? Each one 100 meters high with a blade span 127 meters in diameter spaced about 650 meters apart and spanning a region of ocean 2.5 times the size of Connecticut? The idea sounds crazy, except for the bottom line: “The cost would be zero,” says Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. “The turbines pay for themselves through the revenue from generating electricity. The storm surge and wind protection are free—a bonus.”

Actually the cost to erect such a massive wind farm, or set of farms, would be many billions of dollars. But Jacobson says the cost would be recouped over time through electricity sales, replacing many coal-fired or nuclear power plants. And then there is the alternative, he notes: “New York is considering building $20 billion in seawalls” to prevent future storm surge damage after Hurricane Sandy caused more than $60 billion in losses in New York and New Jersey. “Seawalls don’t pay for themselves,” Jacobson says. “Turbines do.”

Jacobson has calculated in mind-bending detail how turbines could defuse hurricane forces, all laid out in a new paper appearing today in Nature Climate Change. The exercise, based on computer simulations, is the latest step in a series of grand plans the engineer has been building for renewable energy technologies.

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/offshore-wind-farms-could-knock-down-hurricanes1/