Wind Farms Accused of Stealing Each Others' Wind

You can't own the wind, but you can, apparently, "steal" it. Enter "wind theft" — a phenomenon that wind farms across Europe are encountering as more of these renewable power plants pop up across the continent, the BBC reports. As powerful and vast as the currents of air that wrap our planet may be, it turns out the effects of hundreds of turbines tapping into them aren't negligible. "Wind farms produce energy, and that energy is extracted from the air. And the extraction of energy from the air comes with a reduction of the wind speed," Peter Baas, a research scientist at Whiffle, a Dutch company specializing in renewable energy and weather forecasting, told the BBC. As a result, the gust behind each turbine is slower, creating a "wake effect." It perhaps puts a very slight blemish on wind's image as a limitless source of clean energy: more care will have to be taken than simply propping up turbines in as many windy locations as possible. Offshore wind farms, for example, can create ... Read full article.