How many wind turbines would power the world?

Answer 1

To power up just North America it would need 40,000,000 wind turbines.

Not sure how many power up the world

The above answer seems to be off by about a factor of 10. The answer that follows is based on information from various sources, including the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the energy resources council of Texas, and the U.S.

renewable energy lab in Colorado.

Peak monthly electricity generation in U.S. - 410,000,000 Megawatt hours

Hours in month for that month (July): 31 * 24 = 744

Typical nameplate power output of wind turbine: 1.7 Megawatts

Capacity factor for wind turbines during that month: 9%

410,000,000 / 744 / (1.7 * (9/100)) = 3,602,000

So it would take roughly 3.6 million wind turbines, at minimum, to power the United States. Although the yearly average capacity factor for wind turbines is roughly 30%, during the summer months, the time of peak electric usage, it is much lower. This results in many more wind turbines being necessary to power the U.S. Wind power has limiting factors that would prevent it from being a single source of power. Wind is too variable and our power needs far too static to allow us to use this form of energy for more then supplemental power. Foe every wind turbine in use, a secondary source of energy needs to be on line to cover the variations of load.