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Why would they be idle? They can pivot for a reason and I haven't seen turbines very close together in any direction. Sometimes they are indeed arranged in a lo

Why would they be idle? They can pivot for a reason and I haven't seen turbines very close together in any direction. Sometimes they are indeed arranged in a long row, but even then, why not use all the wind energy they can get? I could imagine problems with turbulence and mechanical wear close to maximum design wind speed and yeah, they might shut down then.

dylan604 6y ago
>Why would they be idle? Sometimes they are idle not because of the lack of wind, but because of the lack of need for the electricity. When power demand is low, the wind turbines are the first things to be stopped. In fact, they use an electrical braking system to keep them from turning. The power companies say that it is much easier to stop/start wind turbines than lower/raise the output of gas/nuclear/coal power plants.
- avianlyric 6y ago
  GP is asking why the turbines would be idle if the wind isn’t coming from a particular directions. They’re not asking for a list of unrelated reasons for why a turbine might be idle. > When the wind is not in a favorable direction the turbines are idle.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Actually: >Why would they be idle? They can pivot for a reason It seems to me you are reading into the post something not there. The person I replied to, quoted above, did not ask what you asked, and actually stipulated that HAWTs do pivot to turn into the more favorable direction.
brudgers 6y ago
In the Texas panhandle along Interstate 40 west of Amarillo there is a continuous east-west line of wind turbines running about forty miles. The turbines face north because the wind is almost always from the north and the turbines are there because the wind is almost always from the north. Each turbine is placed to avoid casting its wind shadow on the other turbines...there are typically three or four banks of turbines from north to south. Suppose the wind shifts to the east, enfilading all those miles of turbines. It’s a turbulence nightmare. But fortunately a rare event. An edge case where idling makes sense and staying online doesn’t. At the extremes of nacelle yaw, the upwind turbines may cast a wind shadow on a downwind bank. Again an edge case where idling some turbines is a reasonable tradeoff. These are networked smart devices. And humans in the loop monitoring and tweaking.
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  Can you comment on https://weatherspark.com/y/4750/Average-Weather-in-Amarillo-Texas-United-States-Year-Round#Sections-Wind https://weatherspark.com/y/4750/Average-Weather-in-Amarillo-...? It suggests that although during winter north and west are the strongest wind directions, in the summer you get south winds up to three quarters of the time, and precious little north wind at all. This is pretty consistent with my loose understanding of how these winds work and my experience in south east Australia: the predominant wind directions vary very significantly by season, and even within seasons substantial deviation is much more common than people often think.
  - brudgers 6y ago
    Amarillo is near the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado. The large wind farms are to the west on top of the mesa. The Llano is the southern end of the High Plains that extend all the way into Montana. As it passes the Rockies the Jet Stream tends to bend south. Further east the weather is more varied. Or to put it another way, its a fair bet people settled in Amarillo for its less horrible weather. There’s not a major city between it and the Rio Grande at Albuquerque 450km to the west just some small towns here and there mostly where the railroad did something interesting. The Llano and the high plains weather patterns are dominated by macro scale climate patterns. This is why the large wind farms are there.

dylan604 6y ago

>Why would they be idle? Sometimes they are idle not because of the lack of wind, but because of the lack of need for the electricity. When power demand is low, the wind turbines are the first things to be stopped. In fact, they use an electrical braking system to keep them from turning. The power companies say that it is much easier to stop/start wind turbines than lower/raise the output of gas/nuclear/coal power plants.

avianlyric 6y ago
GP is asking why the turbines would be idle if the wind isn’t coming from a particular directions. They’re not asking for a list of unrelated reasons for why a turbine might be idle. > When the wind is not in a favorable direction the turbines are idle.
- dylan604 6y ago
  Actually: >Why would they be idle? They can pivot for a reason It seems to me you are reading into the post something not there. The person I replied to, quoted above, did not ask what you asked, and actually stipulated that HAWTs do pivot to turn into the more favorable direction.

brudgers 6y ago

In the Texas panhandle along Interstate 40 west of Amarillo there is a continuous east-west line of wind turbines running about forty miles. The turbines face north because the wind is almost always from the north and the turbines are there because the wind is almost always from the north. Each turbine is placed to avoid casting its wind shadow on the other turbines...there are typically three or four banks of turbines from north to south. Suppose the wind shifts to the east, enfilading all those miles of turbines. It’s a turbulence nightmare. But fortunately a rare event. An edge case where idling makes sense and staying online doesn’t. At the extremes of nacelle yaw, the upwind turbines may cast a wind shadow on a downwind bank. Again an edge case where idling some turbines is a reasonable tradeoff. These are networked smart devices. And humans in the loop monitoring and tweaking.

chrismorgan 6y ago
Can you comment on https://weatherspark.com/y/4750/Average-Weather-in-Amarillo-Texas-United-States-Year-Round#Sections-Wind https://weatherspark.com/y/4750/Average-Weather-in-Amarillo-...? It suggests that although during winter north and west are the strongest wind directions, in the summer you get south winds up to three quarters of the time, and precious little north wind at all. This is pretty consistent with my loose understanding of how these winds work and my experience in south east Australia: the predominant wind directions vary very significantly by season, and even within seasons substantial deviation is much more common than people often think.
- brudgers 6y ago
  Amarillo is near the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado. The large wind farms are to the west on top of the mesa. The Llano is the southern end of the High Plains that extend all the way into Montana. As it passes the Rockies the Jet Stream tends to bend south. Further east the weather is more varied. Or to put it another way, its a fair bet people settled in Amarillo for its less horrible weather. There’s not a major city between it and the Rio Grande at Albuquerque 450km to the west just some small towns here and there mostly where the railroad did something interesting. The Llano and the high plains weather patterns are dominated by macro scale climate patterns. This is why the large wind farms are there.