People scoffed at the idea for the longest time when it was first broached – that as offshore turbines became ever more powerful, their massive blades spinning created their own ‘wakes’ behind them. In other words, a powerful stream of directed air disturbed and created turbulence not only in the airspace directly behind the turbine but for good distances beyond and impacted the ocean below.
These questions and early studies were dismissed out of hand by the wind industry and its advocates.
HAH, HAH, HAH – YOU FUNNY GUY – IT’S JUST A BIG FAN
The first farms had turbines lined up like little ducks in a row, and then those pictures started coming in.
This one is from 2016, taken during a low-hanging fog that made for a graphic illustration.
Hang on a minute – you can see the first turbines but barely make out the second row directly behind them, and, well, where are the rest?
Wake turbulence behind wind turbines at the Horns Rev wind farm. pic.twitter.com/AXhj8JXFYo
— MachinePix (@MachinePix) July 31, 2016
Lost in what we Marines would call ‘prop wash’ or that ‘wake’ everyone said didn’t exist, and if it did, it didn’t make no never mind.
Fast forward several more years of this Green grifting debacle with the technology and monitoring advances, and…well…whaddaya know?
Everyone’s jabbering about ‘wind wake.’
The first clue I had that this was a real thing impacting (especially) energy-challenged Europeans came in February. The Germans, who still refuse to retire their nuclear plants, were planning on expanding their offshore capacity but had to radically ratchet back the planned number of turbines thanks to the wake effect affecting the efficiency.
German offshore waters were already becoming too crowded with turbines.
Not only that, but it turned out the German turbines were having an effect by virtue of their wakes on the Dutch offshore programs, too. The Dutch shut their offshore development down completely.
Then, lo and behold, yesterday, another blurb on wind wakes, this time from the UK, another country heavily invested in offshore.
65 klick long wakes? OMG.
And building the wind “farms” closer together is a GOOD idea?
Wow.
— TheRealJeffS (@TheReal_JeffS) March 14, 2025
As Jeff said in his Xweet, the darn wakes from these things have been documented out as far behind as 65km! So the University of Manchester has scored themselves the bucks for a study to validate the other wind studies, and try to figure out how to mitigate the wake problem. This is critical in the UK – as in Europe – because they’ve sold themselves down a Green river.
…Wakes have been observed extending 65 kilometres and are said to increasingly impact the performance of neighbouring farms, reducing the efficiency of the turbines in producing energy and causing conflicts between wind farm operators.
The POUNDS project aims to explore the impact of offshore wind farms on each other’s energy production and revenue, as well as to identify the best locations for future offshore wind farms to minimise these losses and support the UK’s renewable energy targets.
It also focuses on validating modelled performance data against operational data and improving the accuracy of wind farm energy production forecasts.
As for its methodology, POUNDS will use mesoscale models, which are a type of advanced numerical weather forecasting model, to model the performance of wind farms spanning the UK waters at a resolution of one kilometre.
It will assess both the offshore wind farms operational in 2023 and the thousands more turbines that are planned by 2030.
The analysis will evaluate the accuracy of the model relative to real-world data and quantify the effects of inter-farm wakes on predicted energy yield. It will also capture wind farm wakes and wind farm performance in comparison to energy export grid data.
By modelling the interactions between wind farms more precisely, the team hopes to provide better guidance for developers and policymakers, reduce investment risks, and resolve conflicts between wind farm operators.
There’s the catch there – ‘evaluate the thousands more turbines planned by 2030‘ to figure out how to make it work. The British have literally bet their country’s energy security on buttloads of wind farms to generate X amount of power and just found out at the last minute that won’t work.
HOLY CRAP
This had me intrigued – how does something this monumentally catastrophic happen at the last second? Willful blindness, purposeful corruption, or ‘hide the decline’ type manipulative skullduggery?
As the subscription to this industry magazine is $859 yr (which also speaks volumes), I won’t be providing links that aren’t paywalled.
But I do want to share some of the headlines and paragraphs I’ve come across whilst digging, starting last September.
‘Staggering’ wake losses pose grave threat to offshore wind sector, warn experts
IN DEPTH | Developers and governments are playing catch-up with science on wind wakes, say experts, with potentially devastating consequences for buildouts
“Frightening” new data is showing that wind wakes between offshore wind farms have been massively underestimated, putting projects in peril and setting the stage for future disputes over “wind theft,” experts have told Recharge.
Last year, a UK examining authority considering an application to build an offshore wind farm in the Irish Sea issued a quietly groundbreaking decision that may serve as a sign of things to come for the sector.
‘Massively underestimated.’ How about that?
That has led to arguments over ‘wind theft’, including lawsuits over faulty ‘wake assessments’ and infringements between developments, according to an article this year.
Wind theft | Five key issues Orsted, RWE and others are fighting over
Who should pay for wake loss assessments, who should decide and which models to use are among key issues offshore wind developers are arguing about
As global power giants continue to clash over their offshore wind farms ‘stealing’ wind from one another, Recharge takes a closer look at five key issues that leading developers including Orsted, RWE and TotalEnergies are fighting over.
As legal showdowns go, it is not the most glamorous of settings. The planning system for England & Wales is not the first venue that comes to mind for precedent-setting clashes between some of the biggest names in the global power industry.
‘Wind theft’ is why Manchester got the study grant.
National UK study to investigate wake losses as ‘wind theft’ disputes heat up
Wake losses are becoming a red-hot issue for the wind industry as disputes between heavyweight developers over ‘wind theft’ break out into the open
Has anyone from the industry told those East Coast governors selling their shores and islands to wind developers about this? How the promised MWs and GWs may not materialize after they pack their formerly pristine bays and ocean views with these monstrosities because there are too damn many too close?
The wake effect can knock a turbine’s power generation back as much as 30%.
Wind turbine ‘wake effect’ could reduce arrays’ power output by 30%
Downstream turbulence from offshore wind turbines can reduce power generation at nearby turbines, substantially reducing the total potential from planned U.S. offshore wind projects, according to recent research from the Colorado University Boulder and National Energy Technology Laboratory.
The researchers’ paper published March 14 in the journal Wind Energy Science suggests that offshore wind turbines off the U.S. East Coast could rob neighboring turbine arrays of wind speed and thus power generation depending on daily conditions, by more than 30%.
“As a result, the wind slows down and becomes more turbulent behind the turbines. This means the turbines downstream get slower wind, sometimes resulting in lower power generation,” according to a Colorado State University summary of the research.
Most of the potential loss to power generation will occur within individual turbine arrays, from wake effect slowing wind speeds to some turbines.
Did Maura Healy, Kathy Hochul, Phil Murphy or Janet Mills – did any of them get told this? God knows I wouldn’t expect them to do any due diligence and read up on it.
And if the industry mentioned it, I’d have someone who can do the #mathz independently and get them to check the figures.
The time to find a massive underestimation before they start pounding pylons in.
What a frickin’ horrific shell game this whole scam has been.
