Wind Farming Anyone?

I was researching starting a wind-farm and came across this primer from the American Wind Energy Association. Item #4 states:

Establish Access To Capital: Building a wind farm is not cheap. On average, wind power development costs around $1 million per megawatt (MW) of generating capacity installed. To take advantage of economies of scale, wind power facilities should be in excess of 20 MW. Assuming theaverage wind turbine is rated at 750 kilowatts (kW) in capacity, this means the installation of at least 26 turbines and an initial investment of $20 million dollars.

That is not the scale I want to operate on right now. I want to focus on becoming energy independent first. I will keep my dreams of wind-farming for the future...

Comments

Lynne said…
Wind farming is an interesting idea (use what you've already got and make clean energy), but it's incredibly land and resource intensive. Like solar power, if you don't have the site specific fuel, you got nuthin'.

It will be interesting to see serious technological gains in either, but I don't see anything on the immediate horizon.

Me? I'm thinking about using a mobius strip in some fascinating, large scale way.
MP said…
"Serious technological gains"? Read my latest post from today. The US has 17 *gigawatts* of wind capacity! Wind is already competitive with coal and is a whole lot cleaner.

As to the "land and resource intensive" part, I'd leave that to the market to solve...

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