You may recall in a very early post of mine that I stated 'more power can be generated in windier conditions' as an advantage of extreme weather events. However, for those who have watched the news in the last 24 hours, it turns out this may not be the case!
Scotland was hit by a relatively extreme storm yesterday with wind gusts of up to 165mph recorded in the Cairngorms (the highest speeds in 25 years), coupled with localised flooding and heavy snow blasts, even the hardiest of Scots were put to the test (although I do recall one news report yesterday in which the interviewee described it as 'barbecue weather'!)
As of yet "climate models in general do not yield consistent or robust estimates of wind speed changes and the results were very uncertain" according to UK Climate Projections. As a result it is difficult to assign an event such as this to human-induced climate change or whether this is just one of the extremes that occurs naturally under a normal distribution of such event.
There was even an article published a couple of years ago in the Scientific American that climate change would bring about reduced wind speeds. You can find the article here. There is a non-linear trend between wind speed and power generated from a turbine. For example, a 15% increase in wind speed will output 50% more energy. Now for wind farmers across America, this statistic will be alarming, as a small reduce in wind speeds can result in a large loss of power. But as I've just said, their are extremely high levels of uncertainty.
What is certain is that the wind will always blow, but there is likely to be regional winners and losers.
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