Your Questions About Wind Turbine

admin answers:

Typically in 29 Palms, you get 8 hours of good wind per day (four hours in the morning, and four hours as the sun begins to set.) The wind speed needs to be around 25 mph to produce sufficient wind to generate at maximum capacity. You’d produce 60 kilowatts of electricity for about 8 hours a day with a 60k wind turbine. That is 8 hours*60 kw, or 480 kw/h. You’d sell that power at about $0.08 per kw/h, so you’d get (480 * $.08=) $38.40 per day from a 60k wind farm. You’ll see soon, as you do the math that it doesn’t justify the cost, unless the wind turbines are HUGE. (Remember the formula for calculating the area of a circle is pi times the radius squared.) The blades need to be large enough to overcome the ratio of the cost of the blades, and that works out to be about 80 to 100 feet long. If the blades aren’t that long, you won’t get the project to pay for itself (without tax subsidies or some other income.)

Now, building even one really big turbine starts paying off spectacularly: but it will be measured in Megawatts, not kilowatts. A GE 1.5MW machine pays for itself (cost is about $2,250,000.00.) There are other manufacturers building at that size and scope too, but GE is a good example.

A GE 1.5MW machine using the same math earns the owner 1500 kw * 8 hours * $0.08 per kw/h = $960.00 per day. In a 365 day year it would generate $350,000.00 per year, and pay off in about 6.5 years. (In actual practice, give it 8 years, because there are Operation and Maintenance cost issues that you must pay for: Someone has to oil the machine!)

admin answers:

The below web site gives the basic design concepts of wind turbine blades

http://www.windmission.dk/workshop/BasicBladeDesign/bladedesignleft.html#anchor674887