Offshore wind farms can tame hurricanes, study finds

Wendy Koch in USA Today: Billions of dollars in U.S. damage from mega-storms Katrina and Sandy might have been avoided with a perhaps surprising device — wind turbines.

That's the finding of a ground-breaking study today that says mammoth offshore wind farms can tame hurricanes rather than be destroyed by them. It says a phalanx of tens of thousands of turbines can lower a hurricane's wind speed up to 92 mph and reduce its storm surge up to 79%.

Unlike sea walls, which protect cities from storm surges, wind farms pay for themselves by generating pollution-free electricity, says lead author Mark Jacobson, an engineering professor at Stanford University. "The additional hurricane (protection) benefit is free."

No offshore wind farms currently operate in the United States, although 11 are under development — mostly off the East and Texas coasts. Most of the world's offshore turbines are in northwestern Europe, but China is ramping up its capacity.

Jacobson says his study, published online in Nature Climate Change, is the first to look at how offshore turbines interact with hurricanes. He says the impact may seem surprising but makes sense: Turbines produce power by taking energy from wind and thus slowing it down....

Offshore wind turbines at Barrow Offshore Wind off Walney Island in the Irish Sea. Shot by Papa Lima Whiskey 2, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license