How many homes can the large 3-blade wind turbines power?
Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at
9:22 pm
We've had a bunch of wind farms pop up in my area and I was wondering how many homes each turbine could power.
Here's a picture of what I mean:
http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/images/2007/07/27/oregon_wind_farm.jpg
Hahaha where I am, it blows almost constantly.
Home | Contact | About | Privacy Policy | Sitemap
Tagged with: hahaha • images • turbine • wind farm • Wind Farms
Filed under: Wind Power
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
It depends on your definition of "large."
The largest of the wind turbines have a capacity of around 5 MW in ideal conditions. The average home consumes about 1000 watts of power (averaged over a 24 hour period), so one of these monsters could, in theory, power 5000 homes.
As David has correctly pointed out, the problem is that wind does not always blow at the optimal speed, and residential power consumption is not linear. Peak demand (between 7 am and 9 am, and again at 5 pm to 9 pm) rarely coincides with maximum generating capacity. The next problem is that surplus capacity is almost impossible to store.
David – even at 1 MW, that’s enough to power 1000 homes not 100.
Power reliably – None. The wind doesn’t blow all of the time.
A big wind turbine will produce 1 megawatt. That would power 100 homes.
I also lived by a wind farm not too far away. These are huge and have a walk up ladder on the inside. They will power upwards of 100 homes a piece I believe. You can get much smaller wind turbines for residential use though. Below is an article that I found that you might find interesting.