The CEO of a Dutch weather forecaster recently suggested that Belgian wind farms are inadvertently “stealing” wind from his own country’s wind farms in the North Sea.

In an interview with Belgian broadcaster VRT, Remco Verzijlbergh, the CEO of Dutch weather forecasting service Whiffle, claimed that Belgian wind farms in the North Sea have an advantage over Dutch ones because of their placement, adding that they are effectively “stealing” Dutch wind. Verzijlbergh claimed that Belgian wind farms are taking up to 3 % of wind energy from Dutch installations, adding that wind speeds measured behind a wind turbine are measurably lower. He clarified that the phenomenon is purely accidental because of the location of the wind turbines, pleading for better coordination between countries in the near future.

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“A wind turbine is designed to extract wind from the air,” Remco Verzijlbergh said. 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. They are located southwest of the Dutch parks, and the wind often comes from the southwest, so you often steal some of our wind.”

The Dutch weather forecasting professional warned that this kind of wind theft will become a bigger issue as more wind farms get installed across the North Sea in an international race to become carbon neutral. in order to avoid conflicts on this matter, better planning and coordination is needed.

“The North Sea is slowly being built with wind farms, so there will be more and more of that wind theft,” Verzijlbergh said. “Coordination is needed so that it is not handled unwisely or that no ‘race to the water’ is organised, where whoever builds first also gets the most favourable wind.”

The decrease in wind speeds behind a wind turbine is reportedly well-documented and known as ‘wind shadow’ or the ‘wake effect’.