What Fish Can Teach Us About Wind

A new model for building wind farms inspired by the way fish swim in schools could decrease costs while increasing power density.

A trio of CalTech students released a paper today arguing that wind farms could yield much greater power density if they were modeled on formations of fish. The most widely used wind turbines have a propeller-like horizontal axis of rotation that converts more than half the energy of the wind it is exposed to, but these turbines must be kept far apart from their...