Simply said, rules of thumb are simple phrases that can be used to acquire a basic notion of system needs. Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL, evaluated 172 large-scale wind generating projects to see how much land they’re actually consuming to find out what’s going on in the real world. The area of things like the concrete tower pad, power substations, and new access roads is referred to as direct land usage. The direct land use for wind turbines in the United States is three-quarters of an acre per megawatt of rated capacity. A 2-megawatt wind turbine, for example, would require 1.5 acres of land.
How many acres does one wind turbine require?
While there is no clear answer to the question of “how many acres do I need for a wind farm?” Wind leases, for example, typically demand a lot more land than solar leases. Because wind turbines take up a lot of room and wind farms need to be spaced far apart to allow for turbulence, developers are frequently looking to lease thousands of acres. On an acre of land, how many wind turbines can be installed? Each wind turbine can take up to 80 acres of land to install, and each turbine produces roughly 2.5 megawatts. Surface activities such as farming can still take place on much of the land because wind turbines are placed so widely apart.
How close should wind turbines be to each other?
Certain minimum distances between separate wind turbines must be observed during micro-siting. A popular rule of thumb suggests a minimum separation between individual turbines of three to five rotor diameters in cross wind directions (less than three in rare instances) and six to eight rotor diameters in main wind directions. Only when the wind direction is strictly perpendicular to the row of wind turbines can a minimum distance of three times or less the rotor diameter be achieved in cross wind direction. The shortest distances in cross wind direction are determined by a layout development iteration process, which is carried out under the condition that wake losses for individual turbines do not go below a chosen average level, which is considered necessary for the wind farm’s economical operation (e.g. the wake losses do not cause decrease in energy output below 85 percent for the following wind turbines). The distance between two neighboring wind turbines can be greater depending on the location of the particular wind turbine and the surrounding conditions (topography, location of nearby wind turbines, number of wind turbines facing the primary wind direction).
The following table summarizes the minimum distances for the Ashegoda wind project. The distance between the turbines in the prevailing wind direction is not taken into account because the wind turbines should be constructed in a single row at this location. If space is not a constraint for a wind park, placing the turbines in a single row is particularly advantageous because a significant portion of the wake effects can be avoided.
The wind potential map (see Figure 1) shows the locations with the best wind conditions (greenish colors, followed by light blue); wind speeds on the plain (dark blue) are up to 2 m/s lower than on the ridges, resulting in a concentration of wind turbines on top of the latter. Single lines of wind turbines with significant space between individual rows are preferable to clusters of turbines for minimizing wake losses, resulting in the layout-example depicted in Figure 3.
The central part of the eastern ridge is nearly parallel to the main wind direction (southeast) in the example layout, which prevents more intensive use of wind turbines because they will be located behind each other in the main wind direction, while the village at the eastern edge of the wind park area limits the length of the southeasternmost row of turbines. The village’s noise level regulations will be exceeded if further wind turbines are built at the northern end of the row. The northern end of the westernmost row of turbines has similar restrictions.
In a square mile, how many windmills can you fit?
There is a lot of space between turbines in any wind farm. Some of that area is used to reduce turbulence, while others are used to follow ridge lines or avoid other hazards. A large portion of this land is devoted to other uses, such as agricultural farming. This total land use was likewise surveyed by the NREL researchers. A rough average of 4 megawatts per square kilometer was discovered (about 10 megawatts per square mile). As a result, a 2-megawatt wind turbine would need a total area of nearly half a kilometer (about two-tenths of a square mile).
On an acre of land, how many wind turbines can be installed?
Although wind turbines have a limited physical footprint, wind farms appear to cover enormous swaths of country. Most wind farms have large, unoccupied spaces, which is why they frequently share land with farms and meadows. But how can engineers figure out how much space between wind turbines to leave? And how many turbines can one acre of land comfortably accommodate?
The spacing required for wind turbines is determined by a number of factors, with size being one of the most important. Wind turbines, on the other hand, require a lot of room or their performance will deteriorate. To minimize interference from other turbines, a 2 MW wind turbine may require between 40 and 70 acres of land. In fact, the expense of land and related infrastructure may compel corporations to close the distance between turbines.
We previously stated that one acre can hold between 40 and 80 wind turbines. This is incorrect. This is a massive overestimation based on the author’s incorrect calculations. The article was last updated on October 5th, 2021.
Are farmers compensated for having wind turbines on their property?
CLOUD COUNTY, KANSAS (AP)
Wind turbine blades slowly slice the frigid air above winter-brown pastures across this central northern county. The Meridian Way Wind Farm’s 67 wind turbines cross dozens of farms and ranches, following the land’s contours and the wind’s eddies above them. The turbines are tall enough that it’s difficult to judge their magnitude from passing cars.
“I would say the lack of financial concern has been a major game-changer for me,” said Tom Cunningham, who owns three turbines on his land and declined to specify his age, adding only that he is “retired.”
Some farmers and ranchers in the nation’s wind belt have a new item to sell in this increasingly precarious moment for farmers and ranchers: access to their wind. Wind turbine leases, which typically last 30 to 40 years, offer landowners with a yearly income that, while tiny, helps to compensate for economic downturns caused by drought, floods, tariffs, and the ever-changing price of the crops and cattle they produce.
Each landowner whose fields either host turbines or are close enough to receive a “good neighbor” payment can earn $3,000 to $7,000 per year for the modest area each turbine takes up (about the size of a two-car garage).
Cunningham was able to pay off his farm equipment and other debts thanks to his lease payments. According to the 2018 U.S. Census, the median income in Cloud County is around $44,000.
“The turbines are referred to as ‘their second wife’ by some of the local farmers. He explained that this is because many farm wives are forced to work in town to make finances meet.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, rural areas have historically endured population reductions, poor employment development, and higher poverty rates than urban areas.
What are the royalties on wind turbines?
The property owner will obtain a wind turbine lease that guarantees the conversion of their land and proper remuneration if an energy developer finds a suitable location for their wind farm. A monthly rental payment will be sent to the landowner, which will vary depending on the number of wind turbines on the property, their location, and the rate of local competition. A smaller, single wind turbine lease can be worth roughly $100,000 on average.
What is the time it takes a wind turbine to pay for itself?
Environmental lifespan assessments of 2-megawatt wind turbines proposed for a big wind farm in the US Pacific Northwest were conducted by US academics. They conclude in the International Journal of Sustainable Manufacturing that a wind turbine with a 20-year working life will provide a net benefit within five to eight months of being put online in terms of cumulative energy payback, or the time it takes to produce the amount of energy required for production and installation.
What is the average price of a wind turbine?
If there is no cost or environmental benefit to putting wind on a system with plenty of hydro, one might wonder why we are doing it. The explanation is that many jurisdictions (Washington and California, for example) have established legislation that exclude current hydropower from the legal definition of renewable energy. Many readers may be surprised to learn that existing hydro meets the requirement of being naturally replenished. Existing hydro is replenished in the same way as new hydro would be.
The BPA grid currently has 3000 MW of wind energy potential (when the wind is blowing). Assuming the above-mentioned windmill pricing, this means that BPA consumers have already spent at least $5 billion on wind-energy production with no apparent return. By 2012, this potential wind capacity is likely to increase, costing BPA customers another $5 billion with no evident gain.
The basic line is that we have permitted policies to pass that are both financially and environmentally damaging. Wind developers would have lost their legally mandated status if these laws had not been in place, and there would be no windmills on grids with plenty of hydro.
Electricity generated by the wind is not free. The cost of fuel for any power plant is only a portion of the total cost to a consumer. The fact that the cost of the fuel is zero does not imply that the cost of the power generated is also zero.
This is comparable to how hydroelectricity is generated. Although the cost of water is zero, the cost of hydro-generated power is not. It comprises charges for operations and maintenance as well as the cost of constructing the hydroelectric dam.
The cost of fuel for a nuclear plant is not zero, although it is a minor part of the total cost of generation. It is unquestionably less than the cost of fuel in a natural gas plant, where the cost of fuel accounts for almost 80% of the generation cost.
Wind generating appears to be worth the fuel cost savings for power companies who utilize oil as a fuel.
Oil, on the other hand, is not widely used due to its high cost.
To summarize, there appears to be no economic basis for installing windmills unless there are no low-cost alternatives. This is especially true when windmills are installed on a grid with plenty of hydro, because there are no corresponding fuel savings.
Inputs:
- Installing a 2-MW wind turbine costs around $3.5 million.
- The cost of operating and maintaining a wind farm is around 20-25 percent of the total cost.
- Wind turbines have a maximum life expectancy of 20 years.
- The cost of gasoline is approximately $4 per thousand cubic feet.
- Oil is currently priced at $80 per barrel.
- 1 kWh of electricity requires around 7.7 cubic feet of natural gas (dividing the generation in Table 7.2a by the fuel consumption in Table 7.3a in these tables published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration ).
- One kWh of electricity requires 0.00175 barrels of oil (using the same tables as above).
Assumptions:
- A wind farm’s capacity factor is approximately 30%. (land based).
- For Hawaii, a greater capacity factor of 45 percent is estimated.
- A wind turbine has a 15-year average lifespan.
- The wind farm’s interest charges are overlooked.
- Transmission line costs are overlooked.
Why aren’t wind turbines clustered together?
Due to land and transmission line constraints, however, wind turbines are frequently placed close together within wind farms, resulting in up to a 40% reduction in wind farm performance for wind directions lined with columns of turbines.
How many wind turbines would be required to replace one nuclear power plant?
It’s an ancient saying that a growing market can accommodate all players, including newcomers. The US electricity market is now experiencing the converse of this, with increasing competition for static demand leading to headlines like the one I saw earlier this week: “Lifeline for Nuclear Plants Is Threatening Wind and Solar Power.
The United States is awash with energy, at least in terms of resources that can be converted into power.
The premise of that headline is paradoxical, given that renewables have relied on government mandates and incentives to drive their spectacular growth for more than a decade. They have made things more difficult for conventional generating technologies like coal and nuclear power, as well as lately cheap natural gas. In the case of coal, this was a foreseen and even purposeful effect, but in the case of nuclear power, it was largely unintended.
Inevitable fight
Much like the recession’s impact on gasoline demand produced a crisis for biofuel quotas, sluggish electricity demand has accelerated and deepened the inevitable battle for market share and the subsequent reorganization of generating capacity. Due to a poor economy and intensive energy efficiency efforts, US power consumption has been practically unchanged since the financial crisis of 2008-9. For all producers, more generation servicing the same demand equals lower pricing and fewer annual hours of operation for the least competitive.
At the same time, abundant, low-cost natural gas from booming shale production has made gas-fired turbines a direct rival in the 24/7 “baseload” segment once dominated by coal and nuclear power, as well as the go-to backup source for integrating additional renewables onto the grid.
Less nuclear power does not automatically imply more renewable energy. More gas or coal-fired power is also a possibility.
The United States is awash with energy, at least in terms of resources that can be converted into power. The sole remaining justification for the large subsidies that wind and power continue to get (nearly $3 billion budgeted for wind alone in 2017) is environmental: primarily, concerns about climate change and the CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions that are associated with it.
That’s why, in response to the recent wave of nuclear power plant retirements, some states are considering offering some type of financial assistance to existing plants. Nuclear power is not just the third-biggest source of electricity in the United States; it is also by far the largest producer of zero-emission energy, with 3.5 times the production of wind and 22 times that of solar in 2016. A significant reduction in nuclear power is just incompatible with the objective to reduce US emissions. Environmental organizations such as EDF have come to similar findings.
When it comes to determining what could replace nuclear, the scale of the reactor is even more important. For example, the annual energy production of a single conventional nuclear reactor is comparable to the output of nearly 2,000 wind turbines of 2 megawatts (MW) each (about half of the 8,203 MW of new US wind installations last year). An infographic I saw on Twitter helps me visualize this:
I understand why utilities and others who are actively investing in wind and solar power believe that providing incentives to keep nuclear power stations from retiring prematurely is “bad policy.” After all, we’ve pushed companies to invest in these specific technologies because it’s been easier to obtain an agreement at the federal and state levels to provide incentives for renewables than for all low-emission energy.
Even in states with deregulated power markets, we don’t have anything approximating an equal playing field for electricity generating.
But, as long as we’re supporting renewables in this way, we should acknowledge that nuclear power is just as valuable. The main advantage of renewables is their minimal emissions (including non-greenhouse air pollutants), which is something that nuclear power also has. However, because of their lower energy densities, which necessitate much larger footprints for the same output, and lower reliability, adding a lot more renewables to the energy mix necessitates additional investments in electricity grid modernization and energy storage, as well as new tools like “demand response.” Nuclear power is small and reliable, with a 90 percent availability rate. It also works well with the existing system.
Level playing field
I’m a great fan of markets because of my experience and philosophy, so I’d generally sympathize with the American Petroleum Institute’s position that states shouldn’t prefer nuclear power over gas and other alternatives. However, we don’t have anything resembling a level playing field for electricity generation, even in states with deregulated electricity markets. Existing federal incentives for wind and solar energy, as well as state Renewable Portfolio Standards, are already heavily skewed in their favor. According to the most recent extension by Congress, these subsidies will be in force until at least 2022. Why are renewables given preferential treatment over nuclear power?
Wind and solar power are important components of the evolving low-emission energy mix, and as their costs fall, we will want more of them, but not at the expense of far larger low-emission energy sources already in place. Less nuclear power does not automatically imply more renewable energy. More gas- or coal-fired power is also on the way. That has been Germany’s experience with the “Energiewende,” or energy transformation.
As long as this is the case, and without comparable incentives for similarly low-emission nuclear facilities, as well as fossil-fuel plants that capture and sequester CO2, we will have an energy mix that is less diverse, less reliable, and emits more CO2 than is necessary in the coming years. That isn’t progress in my opinion.