Synergistic Wind Farm Design Inspired by Schooling Fish

Innovation: Academia

California Institute of Technology

2010

Image: Milos Prelevic / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Move in/Through Gases

Living systems must move through gases (which are less dense than liquids and solids) such as those in the earth’s atmosphere. The greatest challenge of moving in gases is that because the living system is heavier than the gas, it must overcome the force of gravity. Moving efficiently in this light medium presents unique challenges and opportunities for living systems. As a result, they have evolved countless solutions to optimize drag and increase lift so that they can stay aloft and take advantage of variable currents. Additionally, they must overcome gravity when moving from a liquid or solid into the air. The fairyfly, the smallest known insect, is a tiny wasp that must move through the air. To the wasp, air feels like a heavy liquid and to move through it, it uses special feathery oars rather than wings.

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Capture, Absorb, or Filter Energy

Energy is naturally available in many forms, including kinetic, potential, thermal, elastic, radiant, chemical, and more. All living systems require energy to carry out their many activities, and have developed strategies appropriate to one or more of those forms. For example, some plants maximize their surface area available for capturing radiant energy from the sun while others have strategies to focus scattered light onto photosynthesizing areas.

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Manage Turbulence

A turbulent force occurs when air or water creates a chaotic or irregular motion. The source can be such things as wind, waves, and eddies caused by obstructions to air or water flow (such as that created by a rock in a stream). Because the force is irregular, it acts in unpredictable ways on multiple parts of a living system at any given time, decreasing the living system’s efficiency. Strategies used to manage turbulence include dampening the amount of turbulence, having flexibility to handle sudden changes, and making quick adjustments. An example is the mucus on aquatic organisms, such as barracuda sharks, that can reduce turbulent friction of seawater by 66%. In doing so, it decreases drag and increases the sharks’ swimming efficiency.

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Patents

The world is poorly designed. But copying nature helps.

This 6-minute video introduces biomimicry, the application of biomimicry at different scales, and connections to the circular economy.

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Wind turbine farm from California Institute of Technology groups turbines together to increase energy output.

Benefits

Increased energy generation
Increased efficiency
Increased performace

Applications

Commercial and industrial energy generation

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 7: Affordable & Clean Energy

The Challenge

Wind turbines are a reliable source of clean energy but when placed together in a farm, they take up a large amount of space and can negatively interfere with one another.

Innovation Details

Inspired by the way fish can reduce the energetic loss by swimming in a school, vertical axis wind turbines are placed close together so that individual turbines can capture downstream airflow produced by neighboring turbines. This reduces the total area needed for the turbines while increasing energy output by up to 10-fold.

Biological Model

As fish swim, they shed tiny vortices. When swimming in large schools, the individual fish transfer energy to each other with these vortices, lowering the energetic costs of swimming.

See related strategy on how fish swim

Biological Strategy

Body Uses Vortices to Save Energy

Rainbow trout

The body of rainbow trout decreases energy required for swimming by interacting with vortices in its fluid environment.

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