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Posted by: Rudydoo on 2010-02-21, 14:48:57
Hey Bad Girl, Mama is pretty close on the facts. To be exact, most large commercial utility sized wind turbines installed in the US today are 2 Megawatts (MW) in size. There is a mechanical reason for this size. Twenty or so years ago when they first started building these big wind farms, the turbines ranged in size from a few hundred Kilowatts to 1 MW. The electricity they produced had to be converted to match the grids AC frequency. Once turbines started exceeding 150 feet in rotor diameter, it was possible to gear them to a generator that would directly tie to the grid and eliminate the converting equipment, which was costly and prone to breakdown. But it's still difficult today to build turbines a great deal larger than that size, even with new technology, the blades just get too long. So the 2 MW turbine fits nicely between the too small size for direct connection to the grid, and too large to be reliably manufactured. A new commercially built 2 MW turbine costs between 3 and 4 million USD today, depending on which materials are used, the shipping and installation costs. If you want to see this information yourself, there are a couple great websites to check out, I will list them below. Good luck, and take care, Rudydoo |
