Getting more out of the wind hardware we have

While our recent feature looked at the various ways to make wind hardware more affordable, researchers at GE's Bangalore technology center are looking at ways to get more out of the wind hardware we already have. They're focusing on two different areas: how wind turbines interact with the grid and how they interact with each other.

Wind turbines are generally not installed in isolation; they're typically part of a larger wind farm. The spacing of the turbines is arranged so that given the prevailing wind direction, each turbine has a minimal impact on the power generated by its neighbors. But "minimal impact" doesn't mean "no impact," and there's no guarantee that the wind will always come from the prevailing direction.

But right now, we don't do much to adjust to those facts. "What happens today is that the wind turbine that is actually in front, that's taking the hit first, tries to generate the maximum power, and then the other turbines will generate whatever is available at that point," GE's Kannan Tinnium told Ars. And that isn't optimal. But to understand how to do any better, you have to create a physical model of the wind traversing the entire wind farm.

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