Bigger Is Better for Wind Turbines

June 21st, 2012 by Joshua S Hill

Scientists have concluded in a new study that, the larger the wind turbine, the greener the electricity it produces. The report appears in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Marloes Caduff and colleagues concluded that wind power is an increasingly popular source of electricity, providing almost 2 percent of global electricity worldwide, a figure that is expected to reach 10 percent by 2020.

The size of turbines is also increasing

One study recently showed that the average size of commercial turbines has grown 10-fold in the last 30 years, from diameters of 50 feet back in 1980 to nearly 500 feet today.

Unsurprisingly, super-giant turbines approaching 1,000 feet in diameter are on the horizon, which pushed the authors into wanting to determine whether larger was better.

Their study showed that bigger turbines do in fact produce greener electricity, for two primary reasons:

Manufacturers now have the knowledge, experience, and the technology to build big wind turbines with great efficiency, minimizing the need for research and development.
Advanced materials and designs permit the efficient construction of large turbine blades that harness more wind without proportional increases in their mass or the masses of the tower and the nacelle that houses the generator. In other words, more clean power without the large increases in the amount of material necessary for construction or fuel for transportation of said materials.

Source: American Chemical Society

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Tags: quickies, study, wind energy technology, wind turbine growth, wind turbine size

About the Author

Joshua S Hill I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

Dave2020

“more clean power without the large increases in the amount of material necessary for construction”

Sounds great, but this is not true of bigger HAWTs floating off-shore. Their platforms would need to deal with the top heavy nature of the wind loading – longer blades, taller tower. In addition to that, installation and O&M costs could well increase, at a time when everyone’s desperately searching for ways to make off-shore wind cheaper to install and maintain.
ToddF

This was an important result, thanks Joshua! It is truly amazing what humans can construct when the “will to achieve” is present. I would like to note that for many, it is not “supersizing”, but “right sizing” and the “will to achieve” a life “off the grid” that motivates installing microturbines to power part or all of their own household needs. This trend is very likely going to grow in parallel to the “supersizing” of the big wind farm turbine models.