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Mega Wind Farms Could Steer Storms

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Kirk-Davidoff acknowledged the hypothetical wind farm was far larger than anything humans are likely to build. But meeting the Department of Energy's goal of wind power generation by 2030 would require that scores of huge wind farms be built throughout the Midwestern United States. The total disturbance caused by turbines could be enough to steer storms.

"If all of the farms were concentrated in the same place, they'd occupy a substantial portion of Texas, and it could probably have an effect," James McCaa of 3Tier, Inc., a renewable energy forecasting company based in Seattle, said. "But they'll be distributed around the country."

However Kirk-Davidoff said that if large farms are ever built that affect storm tracks, it could be a good thing.

"Let's say a big snow storm is headed for New York City and if you leave the wind farms on, it has an 80 percent chance of hitting, but if you turn them off, there's only a 40 percent chance," Kirk-Davidoff said. "That's about the best we could probably ever do, because weather forecasting is full of uncertainty.

"But then you'd want to weigh the cost of turning off the electricity generation against the cost of cleaning up all that snow."

Related Links:

Discovery Blog: Earth Impacts

Planet Green: What You Didn't Know About Wind Power

Discovery Tech Blog: Powr Talk: Wind Power

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