Why do wind turbines need to be so large, tall and scattered?

This article will explain why wind turbines are so huge.

It will take you through underlying ideas and help you understand the basic principles of energy generation from wind.

Now, let’s dive in.

🧹Swept area

To generate energy you need to capture the wind.

The “wind net” is equivalent to the area in which the rotor sweeps. This area scales by the square of the blade length.

Therefore… the bigger the better

⬆ Higher and higher

Two key reasons for taller towers:

1. We want to avoid the blades hitting the ground
2. Wind speed increases as you move away from the ground because trees and obstacles cause a drag on the passing wind. Wind energy increases with the cube of the wind speed so doubling the wind speed gives eight times the energy.

Therefore… the bigger the better

🌫 Avoiding turbulence

Free-flowing is easier to catch.

Wind passing through a wind turbine creates turbulence for those behind. Therefore you want to space out your turbines in a staggered formation to avoid losses.

Therefore… the bigger the wind farm the better.

⚡ Megawatts

Now you have optimised your wind capture you have to turn it into electricity

With your huge blades and tall towers, the next component to grow is the generator. Over the past 20 years, wind turbine generators have gone from thousands of watts (kW) to millions (MW).

These turbines are now powering huge amounts of our daily lives.

I hope you now have a better appreciation of these engineering masterpieces.

Let me know your comments or questions.