The Dutch accuses the Belgians of theft of wind on wind farms in the Baltic. The expert explains the reasons

According to the newspaper, some Belgian wind farms located southwest of the Dutch, take up to 3 percent. energy generated in neighbors, which “creates the risk of future conflicts for air currents.”

– It's hard to call wind. This is “Wake Effect”, which is the effect of an aerodynamic trace in wind energy, known and described by scientists a phenomenon – explains Dr. Tomasz Harackiewicz, director of the Wind Energy Maritime Energy Center at the Maritime University in Gdynia.

As he emphasized, in order to drive a turbine, the wind must give it kinetic energy, which turns into electricity, which causes a decrease in wind speed.

– This is not just a matter of energy donated to turbine blades, but also turbulent turbulences that can pull on kilometers and change the direction of the wind. This is the “wake effect” – said the expert and added that if the wind turbines are on the line, then the wind is weakening with each subsequent one.

The air flowing through the wind turbine loses the speed and produces turbulence, which can negatively affect the windmills behind it, and this reduces the energy efficiency of subsequent devices. As you can read on the Renovables.blog website, when the turbine is exposed to a low -speed wind, it produces less electricity, and besides, “turbulent flow may increase the mechanical wear of the shoulder blades, shortening their life.”

– This happens on every wind farm, where the turbines are relatively close to each other. In addition, e.g. 100 turbines accumulated on one wind farm may affect the functioning of other wind farms – emphasized Halackiewicz.

The effect of an aerodynamic trace may be smaller or larger depending on the number of turbines, their height, spatula spans and turbines on the farm. It also depends on the standard wind directions on a given water and distance between individual wind farms.

Remco Verzijlbergh, an expert of the Dutch Weather Forecasting website, talked about the effects of this physical phenomenon. “Behind the wind farm with many wind turbines close to each other, you can really see lower wind speeds,” he argued in an interview with the Belgian TV station Vrt Verzijlbergh.

In his opinion, the current setting of Belgian farms brings the Dutch losses, and taking into account the increase in the number of wind farms in the North Sea “will be more and more winding.” According to “Times”, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland And Luxembourg agreed to create in the North Sea the world's largest marine wind energy zone. By 2030, all these countries are to generate 120 GW power in the North Sea. They currently reach a level of 30 GW.

According to Harackiewicz, the “trail effect” may therefore be more and more bothering for wind producers. – Weakening of the wind affects the generation of electricity and this may have a noticeable impact on the financial result of the investment in the wind farm – the expert assessed.

However, in the opinion of an expert, such situations can be avoided by predicting the occurrence of the “trace effect” at an early planning stage.

– Sometimes countries consult the locations of wind farms in their exclusive economic zones to avoid disputes, conflict of interests within some conditions. You can see that in this case there was no such consultation at the stage of issuing permits and locations of such consultations – emphasized Dr. Halackiewicz.

In his opinion, claims about the negative impact of other wind farms may be justified, but “the problem is that there are no detailed regulations in this sphere on which one could resist.”