Wind turbines need to be farther apart, suggests study

Charles Meneveau, a Johns Hopkins University (JHU) fluid mechanics and turbulence expert, working with a colleague in Belgium, has devised the new precept through which the optimal spacing for a large array of turbines can be obtained.

‘I believe our results are quite robust,’ said Meneveau, who is the Louis Sardella Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the university’s Whiting School of Engineering. ‘They indicate that large wind farm operators are going to have to space their turbines farther apart.’

According to JHU, the newest wind farms typically use turbines with rotor diameters of about 300 feet.

Currently, turbines on large wind farms are spaced about seven rotor diameters apart. The new spacing model developed by Meneveau and Johan Meyers, an assistant professor at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, suggests that placing the wind turbines 15 rotor diameters apart - more than twice as far apart as in the current layouts – results in more cost-efficient power generation.