Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 109, Issue 39, Pages 15679-15684Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1208993109
Keywords
atmospheric modeling; climate feedbacks; renewable energy; water vapor; clean energy economy
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration high-end computing
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [1139854] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Wind turbines convert kinetic to electrical energy, which returns to the atmosphere as heat to regenerate some potential and kinetic energy. As the number of wind turbines increases over large geographic regions, power extraction first increases linearly, but then converges to a saturation potential not identified previously from physical principles or turbine properties. These saturation potentials are >250 terawatts (TW) at 100 m globally, approximately 80 TW at 100 m over land plus coastal ocean outside Antarctica, and approximately 380 TW at 10 km in the jet streams. Thus, there is no fundamental barrier to obtaining half (approximately 5.75 TW) or several times the world's all-purpose power from wind in a 2030 clean-energy economy.
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