UK CANCELS OLYMPIC WIND

Urban wind power will never match open country sites
Professor Doug King, June 4, 2010 (UK Times)

"It was always going to be difficult for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) to deliver economic wind power without succumbing to eco-bling. Urban wind power is never going to match the energy generation potential of wind in open country sites…The Wind Energy Database maintained by the Department of Energy and Climate Change indicates that the location for the Olympic turbine is marginal for economic wind generation.

"…[W]ind speed is dramatically reduced over cities because of friction with buildings dissipating much of the energy as turbulence…[I]t would be reasonable to expect the generation potential of the Stratford [Olympic] turbine to be about only half that of an identical machine in open country…[T]he wind generation potential in urban areas is reduced to about 10 per cent of the open country maximum."

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"In the right locations wind power is an economically attractive form of renewable energy generation. However, large wind turbines are a significant investment and if the generation potential of a site is poor then wind energy developers will look elsewhere. This may explain why the ODA has failed to find a new developer prepared to step in…

"There are few other renewable technologies that can match wind power economically. One must hope the ODA enforces energy efficiency standards for the new [Olympic] buildings to reduce demand. This would be preferable to investing in expensive technologies to offset 20 per cent of unnecessarily high demand."