Multimedia Gallery
Control strategy reaps maximum power from wind farms
This image of Wind Energy by University of Texas at Dallas researchers Christian Santoni, Kenneth Carrasquillo, Isnardo Arenas‐Navarro and Stefano Leonardi was produced using Stampede2 at the Texas Advanced Computing Center.
More about this image
In 2016, wind provided 5.6 percent of all electricity produced in the United States, more than double the amount generated by wind in 2010, but still a far cry from its potential.
Now, a team of researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) has developed a new way to extract more power from the wind. The approach has the potential to increase wind power generation significantly with a consequent increase in revenue. Numerical simulations performed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) indicate potential increases of up to six to seven percent.
According to the researchers, a 1 percent improvement applied to all wind farms in the nation would generate the equivalent of $100 million in value. This new method, therefore, has the potential to generate $600 million in added wind power nationwide.
This research was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation's Partnerships for International Research and Education program, "The WINDINSPIRE project" (grant OISE 12-43482); and by the Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers program through the Wind-Energy Science, Technology, and Research Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (grant IIP 13-62033). Additionally, TACC provided computational time.
To learn more about this research, see the NSF News From the Field story New control strategy helps reap maximum power from wind farms. (Date image taken: 2015-2018; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: Aug. 10, 2018)
Credit: Stefano Leonardi, The University of Texas at Dallas
See other images like this on your iPhone or iPad download NSF Science Zone on the Apple App Store.
Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.
Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.
Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.
Also Available:
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (629.6 KB)
Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.