How many windmills would you need to produce as much power as one average nuclear power station?
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April 18 2011

Commentary by David Fuller

How many windmills would you need to produce as much power as one average nuclear power station?

This interesting question appeared on Yahoo Answers.


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Let's take two typical examples: a GE 1.5 MW wind turbine, and the Comanche Peak Nuclear Generating station outside of Dallas, Texas. Comanche Peak has 2 reactors, with a combined capacity of 2.5 GW.

So, to find out how many wind turbines we would need to generate the power of Comanche Peak, we first need to divide the total reactor output by the nameplate rating of a wind turbine:

2500 MW / 1.5 MW = 1,667

But not so fast: most wind turbines only have an average capacity factor of around 25%, meaning that they only produce, on average, about 25% of their rated capacity (nuclear power plants have an average capacity factor of more than 95%). So multiply the number of turbines required by four to get the real requirement:

1,667 * 4 = 6,668

Thus, it would take nearly 7,000 wind turbines to equal the output of a single typical nuclear power plant!

But that's not all: since wind speeds naturally vary a great deal, you need to build coal or natural gas backup generating capacity equal to 100% of the total nameplate capacity of the wind farm. This is borne out in the experience of Denmark, which has more installed wind capacity per capita than any other nation, but has been unable to shut down even a single one of its coal-fired power plants.

David Fuller's view There are some interesting comments in the "Other Answers"

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