this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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Not The Onion

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Verzijlbergh explained that Belgian wind farms have an advantage over Dutch ones. “They are located southwest of the Dutch parks and the wind often comes from the southwest, so you often steal some of our wind,” he said.

Umm, my guy. It sounds like it's their wind and they graciously pass on their leftovers instead of "extracting" all of the wind.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It was then that the Dutch poldered the Netherlands out to upwind of the Belgian wind farms.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Would be such a power move.

[–] HikingVet 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Peak old man yells at clouds.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

They're gonna steal them next!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Just ask them to spin the windmills in reverse 3% of the time

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There’s a fart joke here somewhere…

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

"But it turned out the French were the ones producing it all along."

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago

How did they catch wind of this?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago

Im sending them my farts

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

ooooo those Belgians! That's why they have those little twirly moustaches!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In an interview with Belgian broadcaster VRT, Verzijlbergh said: “A wind turbine is designed to extract wind from the air. If you measure behind a wind turbine, the wind blows less hard. Behind a wind farm with many wind turbines together, you really see lower wind speeds.”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

To me this does make ‘scientific or math sense’. But, how dramatic is it?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Let's take windmill like in the example, it has 3 blades, each maybe at most 5 degrees wide (out of the 360 for a circle). So that covers 15 total degrees or 1/24th the wind area, so at absolute best, it's about 4% of the wind power in that area being stopped. But the blades don't actually capture 100% of the wind power, a good amount will deflect off, those blades are not 5 degrees wide, they're less and they aren't straight blades, so again they capture less. Further the blade only captures a small vertical section of its own footprint, so it captures dramatically less wind power. Lastly blades are spaced with a good amount of clearance from each other leading to even less wind power captured. In aggregate, even by entirely layman measure, these likely have an immeasurable impact on another wind farm.

I'd bet if you built a mile high, mile wide wind capture device that captured 100% of wind power going to it, and then put a 2nd one 1 mile directly behind that, you could just maybe get a few % measurable impact.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

To add to this, it is literally impossible to capture 100% of wind power, even in theory, because that would mean bringing the air to a full stop, halting flow. The air must retain some of its energy to continue moving through the system. The theoretical maximum is a little under 60% according to Betz's Law. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betz%27s_law

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

So, quite literally ‘no noticeable impact’ and entirely ‘free energy’. And these ‘anti-wind’ viewpoints are still continued anti-renewable propaganda. Like the thousands of dead birds from hitting windmills…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Ok but they are saying they want that few% I don't think anyone is arguing it's a big number but it is a number none the less. That's the number they need back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

it does make sense to me too. the effect is just not "big", whatever that means xD.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

For fuck's sake... it starts...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

They’ll never have more trumps than the US.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

Just don't break it, before you send the wind onwards to me...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Next thing we know they'll be accusing chestnuts of being lazy.