I see turbines in the distance

Kinneson Lalor

At a party on the fifteenth floor 
of a block of flats I loathed 
before they built it – 
staring at plans on a screen 
and an empty box for comments 
I couldn’t fill despite the endless hours 
locked down and wordless 
in my flat, inhaling slowly 
at promises 
(groundbreaking 
energy options, 
groundbreaking 
construction practices)
watching steel and cement and men 
in hard hats flicking cigarette 
butts into builders’ sand. 

I wonder why I came
crushed against the balcony 
glass, forced to look all the way 
to the sea, splayed heads of turbines 
rushing trisected parts
to gather the air 
above the wash.

There’s an optimal placement, 
drawn energy maximised, 
until the crowd of limbs reaches 
a certain size. Airflow 
efficiencies in a group 
compare much less than a single turbine 
on its own. Neighbours 
injecting turbulence, 
downstream disturbances 
rocking chaos in blades, 
flailing me still. I extract 
nothing. 

There’s an optimal size, 
calculable. Treat air as a fluid 
a viscousless, weightless, incompressible 
fluid, a fluid where capacity for heat is a low 
low ratio, look at the individual wakes, 
how they are arranged, 
reduce the density and face 
them to the wind, gaps between shoulders 
two metres apart. Or more. 
The numbers change 
as often as the howl of air.

But even in this disposition, 
gains vanish as the surface wind 
slows, the gathering crowd murmuring 
a uniform wake, airless turbulence 
even in the stairwell 
even in the car park 
even outside the store 
on the ground floor where teenagers vape 
and orange light from missing cigarettes 
somehow still burn in the dark.
Size
volume
capacity depending on the atmosphere above 
and the latitude of the party 
and how long it’s been since I stood 
beside another turbine,
heard the rush of air
and felt the warmth of ground
breaking energy.

The Science

This poem was inspired by some computational modelling of wind farms I was involved with during lockdown. The flow of the wind past the turbines is simulated to estimate the power output from the wind farm. Single turbines can generate more power than an individual turbine within a small farm which, in turn, can generate more power than an individual turbine in a large wind farm. If the farm is too large, the surface wind speed of the whole area can be affected. But in smaller farms, modelling the layout of the turbines and how they interact can be key in getting the most efficient design. 

As social obligations have slowly ramped up post-lockdown, I have found myself identifying more with seemingly lonely turbines compared to the less efficient large wind farms that produce more energy in total but not per turbine.

The Poet

Kinneson Lalor followed a PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge with an MSt in Creative Writing from the same institution. She is Australian but lives in the UK. Her work has appeared in various places including Tiny Molecules, Northern Gravy, Ghost Parachute, and Cease, Cows; and on various shortlists including the BFFA. She was the 2021 winner of the 1000 Word Herd competition and placed third in the 2021 streetcake experimental writing prize for fiction. She is currently querying for her novel about time-travelling botanists and beasts in Swedish castles. You can find her on Twitter (@KinnesonLalor), Instagram (@kinneson.lalor), or via www.kinnesonlalor.com.

Next poem: Mammoth by Julian Bishop