• Question: How much energy does a windmill give us a day?

    Asked by 323enek48 to Emma, Karla, Shane, Stephen, Yang on 14 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by Farheen :3.
    • Photo: Karla Dussan

      Karla Dussan answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      Hi there,
      The amount of energy depends on the size of the windmill and the conditions of wind in the region. You can check out this map from Google https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1VmdF-_zJrJmiElGKAbM2D6zWfA8&hl=en_US&ll=53.45056352500176%2C-8.089682000000039&z=7
      or this tool offered by Airtricity https://www.sseairtricity.com/ie/home/who-we-are/what-we-do/generation-map/
      You can see a single windmill can generate from 0.5 up to 6 MW … that is from 10 to 150 MWh per day… Which is enough to provide electricity for 2 to 30 Irish houses in a year!

    • Photo: Emma Hanley

      Emma Hanley answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      It differs from day to day as it will depend on the size of the wind turbine and the wind speed. Take a a 2 MW wind turbine for example with MW being a unit for Power. All power plants and turbines generating electricity will have a capacity factor. A 100% capacity factor means that the power plant or turbine would generate the maximum amount of electricity it could all the time on a particular day. In reality capacity factors are not 100% as a result of losses. Wind turbines have a capacity factor of about 30%. Meaning in a particular year it will generate full electricity for 30% of the year. If we take this capacity factor for a day 0.3 and multiply it by 2 MW and multiply this by 24 hours in a day we get 14.4 MWh generated in one day based on these assumptions.

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