how many homes can you power with a large wind turbine generator.
Who am I ?
Hi, I’m Erik Astrand and the man behind this site.
My story? I am about to be 50 and all my life I have been interested in technical things. Not sure if the special interest for the wind, and how to use the wind, started when I as a 5 year old boy and got my first sail dinghy.
Anyway, wind power and to build my own wind generator was a dream for several years. I studied many websites and also bought many courses before I finally built my own windmill. This site is about that journey and you will also find some more general articles about wind power.
Enjoy! and check out the about me page to read more.
Based on the amount of households which divides the 1000 people and the amount of energy used by local businesses, you could theoretically power the city with 1 turbine.
Another issue is that wind turbines come in all different sizes, from in the order of watts and up to 5 MWs.
Todays wind farms, speaking from experience in West Texas, use turbines from 1 MW to 2.3 MWs. With this size of turbine, depending on the cooperation of the wind, can power anywhere from 300 to 600 houses.
The only issue with wind power is that there is no way to contain the energy for later use, besides small batteries, which would be unrealistic. Because of this, you could create enough power from 1 to 2 wind turbines to run the city but you could no be self sufficient and detatched from the grid.
A large one is 6 MW.
Average home uses 1kW, so you can power 6000 homes.
BUT only if the wind is blowing all the time.
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Rock Port Missouri has 4 turbines and about 1400 people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Port,_Missouri
http://www.rockportwind.com/