How many windturbines would be needed to power the entire earths electricity needs?

Answer 1

well the total consumption of earths power on average sofar a year is 15TerraWatts of power, although this increases each year. the average output per year for 1 turbine is 0.35MegaWatts so that would mean, roughly 45000000 (fouty five million) wind turbines could more than power earths entirety (43Million is more than enough) even with 43 million there would be lots going to waist.

Now the total cost of all this would be 460trillion dollars, which is not that much. it would be affordable if 10 or 20 of the worlds most wealthiest countries, gave a decent wack of money from their annual incomes (not that much tho) so like 25 of countries gave a 20 trillion dollar donation. (they make way more each year. its affordable, and will give too many benefits for it to be a rip off.

-Ignore above. the 2000 gross world product was ~44 trillion. 460 trillion is more than all the world has. I've seen the 15 terawatt figure as well, so this may be a reasonable figure. A good sized land-based wind turbine today has a rating of 3MW, and a good power factor of 35% - so you can estimate an average turbine as being able to produce 3MW x .35 = 1.05MW constantly. Do the math and you end up with needing approximately 14.25 million good sized wind turbines.

Actual cost cannot be calculated by this number. Significant upgrades to power infastructure is necessary to even begin to think about this sort of thing. Also, Virtually every power plant now in existence would need to be scrapped and replaced with large fast start type units. The amount of land needed and people to take care of such a system is staggering. Remember power production in and of itself does not provide any useful goods - this would simply increase the cost of power, which would decrease the amount of real goods produced from that power, and in the end bankrupt the world.

just letting you know, America by itself spends atleast 20 trillion a year on war related stuff.14.35 million turbines might cost 120-171trillion(that's a retail price) you might be able to do it for 10-12trillion. and there is more than 460trillion on whole earth, Donald Trump and Bill Gates and the late Micheal Jackson had atleast 15trillion (Micheal 5-10) each so that's, atleast 40trillion between 3 people, what about all the casinos. cocacola amitil make 500billion+ a yea. i think the total gross is not acurate to be honest, people are likely to hide money, and not many people are honest (especially rich people) on incomes

there are parts of the earth that produce constant wind speeds of 150km/hour, putting a decent windfarm there would produce 75TerraWatts easily