• Question: how many wind turbines would it take to produce 8.5% of the produced energy from a power plant

    Asked by buckett to Daniel, Jon, Louise, Sharon, Zoe on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Daniel Richardson

      Daniel Richardson answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      it depends on what sort of power plant. If it was a wind turbine power plant, it would take about 17/200th of the wind turbines to produce the same power.

    • Photo: Louise Dash

      Louise Dash answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi buckett – I just answered a similar question to this about power plants. Drax power station, a few miles away from here in York, generates around 4000 megawatts of power. A Vestas V112 wind turbine generates 3 megawatts of power.

      8.5% of 4000 is 340 MW, and 340/3 is 113.3, so the answer to your question (is it part of your homework?) is that it takes around 113 Vestas V112 to generate the equivalent of 8.5% of the energy from Drax. Remember thought that Drax is one of the biggest power stations in the UK, so it’s not a very fair comparison! 😀

    • Photo: Jon Copley

      Jon Copley answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      That depends on how big the power plant is, and how big the wind turbines are.

      You’ll need to look up the output of the power plant (a number in megawatts, or MW). And then look up the power output of the wind turbine (again, a number in megawatts). Then divide one by the other to find out how many wind turbines would equal the output of the power plant. And then you want 8.5% of that number.

    • Photo: Sharon Sneddon

      Sharon Sneddon answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I think it would depend on the type and size of the power plant!

    • Photo: Zoe Duck

      Zoe Duck answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Thats a big question! It would depend on the postition of the turbines, the amount of wind, etc. Also it would depend on the type of the power plant too.

      This link will tell you a little bit more about wind power: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Capacity_factor

Comments