ENGINEERS have long been baffled as to why the power output of wind turbines
suddenly drops in high winds. Now researchers at the Energy Centre of the
Netherlands in Petten say that bugs accidentally splattered onto the blades
might be to blame. In gentle winds, bugs splatter on the leading edges of
blades, building up an uneven deposit of insect corpses, says Gustave Corten in
this week’s Nature (vol 412, p 41). By monitoring the flow of wind over
the blades, Corten and his colleagues were able to show that this deposit
doesn’t affect output in low winds.
In…
