A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has shown that in a traditional wind farm, the different wind turbines affect each other’s efficiency. This means that wind farms can generate more energy if the turbines aren’t configured individually but collectively as wind farms.

This conversion doesn’t require investment in new equipment or infrastructure — the modification of an algorithm is all that’s needed. This can result in a wind farm generating about 1.2% more energy overall and as much as 3% at optimal wind speeds. That might not sound like much, but if all the wind farms in the world made this change, it would be the equivalent of 3,600 new wind turbines and power about 3 million additional homes.

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology