How much energy can one wind turbine produce?

[kweenii]

I am writing an essay about the positives and negatives of wind farming.

Does anybody know how much energy is produced from one wind turbine, working at full capacity, a day?

And, if possible, how this energy could be used in respect to how long it could power a house for etc.

[Graham-W]

There is a handy little calculator here http://www.reuk.co.uk/Calculate-kWh-Generated-by-Wind-Turbine.htm
You can design and adjust all the figures to suit your needs.
Ecotricity build about 15% of the wind farms in the UK. They currently have 31 wind parks with a total of 96 turbines generating 194 MW of electricity per year. This is sufficient to supply 164,000 homes.
See http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/wind-parks/

[kweenii]

Thanks a lot, thats a great help :)

[jake-the-peg]

There is a huge variation

The big ones can now be 6 or 7 MegaWatts each roughly 5,000 homes

http://www.metaefficient.com/news/new-record-worlds-largest-wind-turbine-7-megawatts.html

Four-burrows Wind farm in Cornwall on the other hand has 15 x 300kW generators!

But that "full capacity" thing of yours is a problem - on land wind farms typically run at about 30% efficiency

The wind does not always blow when and where you need it and storing electricity is notoriously difficult.

The energy could probably be used to power a house for say 8 hours before the wind stopped and you had a powercut!

This is why renewables are a useful zero carbon energy source that we need to use but only as part of a larger solution

[beso]

A MW is a power unit not an energy unit so MW per year is incorrect use of units.
That would be 194 MW.

Land wind farms do not run at 30 percent efficiency.
Efficiency is the rate at which the wind energy can be converted to electricity and thye do better than 30 percent.
From the context, Jake probably means 30 percent capacity or utilisation or the operating proportion of the maximum power rating.
This would mean 1MW turbine would produce 7.2 MWhr or energy per day.

Power x Utilisation x time.
1MW x 0.3 x 24 hrs

[jake-the-peg]

Yes sorry that's exactly what I was referring to

[xud]

A few years ago somebody told me that the energy required to design, manufacture, commission, maintain and eventually de-commission these wind turbines is more than what it produces in its lifetime.

Ever noticed that when you drive past these turbines there is always one or two that are not spinning.

Interesting...

[kweenii]

Thank you for all your help.

Sometimes I don't know why I choose such hard and complex subjects to write essays about!