Wind farms can produce more energy by making individual turbines less efficient

[thomdunn]

Originally published at: Wind farms can produce more energy by making individual turbines less efficient | Boing Boing

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[lumbercartel]

Yet another example of local optima not scaling.

Or, of course, a lovely parable on collective action.

[vrplumber]

If each windmill is extracting a bit of energy from the wind, how many windmills would it take to stop wind entirely?

[anon87143080]

It is left as a problem for the student to calculate the number of windmills necessary to halt the wind.

Part 2: How many king Canutes are needed to hold back all the world’s tides.

[Alan_Wendt]

Glad I’m not a bird.

[ValiantAP6]

Yes but on the up side cows will be delivering much less curdled milk with this tech.

Hang on…if they get the math just right then maybe we can get efficient energy and cheese straight from the cow!

[DukeTrout]

@Alan_Wendt

Glad I’m not a bird.

Well, at least not one of the 0.001% of birds killed by windmills per year compared to the birds killed by climate change per week.

[eccentriccog]

Wait until you hear about windows, cats, & urban light disruption.

[gatto]

@lumbercartel

Yet another example of local optima not scaling

reminds me of the idea that to achieve the well tempered scale, all of the notes are just slightly out of tune so that you can transpose anything anywhere and it will all be equally off.

granted, it probably has no relation at all.

@eccentriccog

Wait until you hear about windows, cats, & urban light disruption

okay. i’ll bite. how do wind turbines disrupt cats?

[Otherbrother]

@lumbercartel

Or, of course, a lovely parable on collective action.

Reminds me of the example of John Nash’s Equilibrium Theory that was shown in A Beautiful Mind.

A Beautiful Mind - Bar Scene John Nash's Equilibrium Game Theory [1080p english full scene]

(Yes, treating the women in the bar as objects to compete over and win isn’t great. The man was not without his issues.)

[Flossaluzitarin]

One, but it must be willing to vacillate in its stopping.

ValiantAP6> cows will be delivering much less curdled milk

That’s who’s doing delivery free now, is it? What?

[HMSGoose]

@lumbercartel

Or, of course, a lovely parable on collective action

And a rather direct analogy for French-style hours-per-week work limitations.

[VeronicaConnor]

This is a super interesting example of system-level optimization. I can foresee someday a wind farm as a unit will be centrally controlled with turbulence sensors around the network, dynamically adjusting blade pitches for optimal system-level performance.