How large of a building can one average sized wind turbine power? Is it closer to a small house or apartment or more like a whole school? I don’t know what all of the energy vocab means, so please tell me the answer in a simple easy to understand way. Thanks.
How much power can one Wind Turbine make?
Previous post: Ben Browning of Georgia Solar Power
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It is going to depend on the size of the turbine and the speed of the wind. Since the power available in the wind is proportion to the cube of the wind speed, a small variation in wind speed makes a huge difference in available output.
When the wind is calm, a wind turbine, or a thousand wind turbines will power no buildings.
When there is a brisk wind we can get 4 Megawatts of power from many of the big turbines along Lake Huron. Now a house might use 400 watts to 16,000 watts. An electrically heated home in mid winter when the wind is strong, might require 16,000 watts.
So 4 million watts might heat 250 houses.
In summer with a strong wind and houses using say 1000 watts, with no air conditioning, the same turbine might provide power for 4 thousand homes.
With air conditioning we might be using as much power as we would to heat a home.
The big ones produce 10k or 10000 watts, a smaller alternator might produce enough for a single house requiring less wattage ie 1000 or less!
One turbine (1.5 Megawatt, GE turbine–the normal ones used in a wind farm) will power 400 homes, or 4 large industrial plants, or 20 schools.