Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA 94305
Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA 94305.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Oct 24;114(43):11338-11343. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1705710114. Epub 2017 Oct 9.
Wind turbines continuously remove kinetic energy from the lower troposphere, thereby reducing the wind speed near hub height. The rate of electricity generation in large wind farms containing multiple wind arrays is, therefore, constrained by the rate of kinetic energy replenishment from the atmosphere above. In recent years, a growing body of research argues that the rate of generated power is limited to around 1.5 W m within large wind farms. However, in this study, we show that considerably higher power generation rates may be sustainable over some open ocean areas. In particular, the North Atlantic is identified as a region where the downward transport of kinetic energy may sustain extraction rates of 6 W m and above over large areas in the annual mean. Furthermore, our results indicate that the surface heat flux from the oceans to the atmosphere may play an important role in creating regions where sustained high rates of downward transport of kinetic energy and thus, high rates of kinetic energy extraction may be geophysical possible. While no commercial-scale deep water wind farms yet exist, our results suggest that such technologies, if they became technically and economically feasible, could potentially provide civilization-scale power.
风力涡轮机不断从下对流层中获取动能，从而降低了轮毂高度附近的风速。因此，包含多个风场的大型风力场的发电速度受到来自上方大气的动能补给速度的限制。近年来，越来越多的研究表明，大型风力场中的发电功率速率被限制在 1.5 W m 左右。然而，在这项研究中，我们表明在某些开阔海域可能可持续产生更高的发电速率。特别是，北大西洋被确定为一个区域，在该区域，动能的向下传输可能在年平均值的大面积区域中维持 6 W m 及以上的提取速率。此外，我们的结果表明，海洋向大气输送的表面热通量可能在创造动能向下传输和因此动能提取的持续高速率的区域中发挥重要作用，这在地球物理上是可能的。虽然尚未存在商业规模的深海风力农场，但我们的结果表明，如果这些技术在技术和经济上可行，它们可能有潜力提供文明规模的电力。
