An Average Wind Turbine Could Take A Tesla To The Sun In 3 Years

7 years Michael Barnard 0 Comments
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In 2018, the average wind turbine installed in the USA was 2.6 MW in capacity. Assuming that it had what is now a middling capacity factor of 40%, it could generate 9.1 GWh of electricity in a year. But what does that mean?

If we put all of that electricity into a Tesla Model S P100D, which takes about 30 kWh to travel 100 miles, we could drive approximately 30 million miles. That’s a third of the way to the sun, so it would be a three-year trip.

If we used the electricity for average US homes, which consumed an average of 10,766 kWh per year in 2016, you could provide all of the electricity for 846 homes.

If we wanted to keep outdoor Olympic-sized swimming pools in Sacramento at 84 degrees Fahrenheit, we could heat 28 of them for a year.

If we powered a giant crane to lift the Empire State building, which weighs 365,000 tons, we could lift it about half a mile into the air.

If we used the equivalent energy of jet fuel, we could fly a loaded Boeing 747 around the world twice. (Just picture that one yourself.)

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Michael Barnard

Michael Barnard is Chief Strategist at TFIE Strategy and publisher of Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing at briefing.tfie.io. He works with investors, infrastructure strategists, NGOs, startups, policymakers, and public-interest organizations on reality-based decarbonization strategy, investment-thesis testing, technology diligence, 2030-2050 transition roadmaps, reports, keynotes, and strategic reality checks. His work tests energy, industry, transportation, infrastructure, and climate-tech pathways against physics, economics, operating evidence, denominators, comparators, and time. Michael’s analysis spans grids, storage, electrification, hydrogen, maritime and aviation fuels, critical minerals, China’s clean-tech scale, industrial decarbonization, geothermal, nuclear and SMR claims, and odd technoeconomic questions such as seabed mining and sulfur supply. Across those topics, his focus is consistent: separating real transition progress from pilots, subsidies, announcements, orderbooks, and narrative momentum. At Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing, free posts carry the public argument, while paid subscribers get the professional layer: Transition Pathway Scorecards, evidence notes, denominator checks, update triggers, reports, and decision-grade context for people working around the energy transition.

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