World, Land, and High-Altitude Saturation Wind Power Potentials

Wind turbines convert kinetic to electrical energy, which returns to the atmosphere as heat to regenerate some potential and kinetic energy. We use the GATOR-GCMOM global model, modified to treat wind turbines as an elevated momentum sink, to explore the effects of increasing the number of wind turbines over large geographic regions. Energy is conserved in the model by converting all electric power generated by the wind turbines to heat via electricity use at the surface, where it occurs, and by converting kinetic energy lost by natural surface roughness to turbulence, then heat. We find that, as the number of turbines is increased, power extraction first increases linearly, but then converges to a "saturation" potential not identified previously from physical principles or turbine properties. These saturation potentials are ~253 TW at 100 m hub height over the entire globe, ~80 TW at 100 m over land and near-shore (outside Antarctica), and ~380 TW at 10 km in the jet streams. Sensitivity to grid resolution is minimal. We propose that these saturation potentials should be used as the world, land, and high-altitude theoretical wind power potentials.