What Is the Most Economical U.S. Wind Project Size?

John Farrell
October 18, 2012 | 5 Comments

Big dreams for renewable energy often goad people into imagining big wind projects, with hundreds of turbines. But lots of smaller projects are just as likely to add up to big numbers.

Counting wind projects from 1999-2010 (based on data from LBNL's excellent Wind Technologies Market report) the average size of an American wind project is 80 megawatts (MW). The size of projects has risen in the past decade, from about 50-60 MW, but largely because the average turbine size in U.S. wind projects has nearly doubled to 1.79 MW in that time period.

Interestingly, the most economical wind projects are between 5 and 20 megawatts.

This post originally appeared on ILSR’s Energy Self-Reliant States blog.

The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.

5 Comments

James Palmer
October 22, 2012

Rich,

I agree, but regional differences are mitigated by the cost and environmental impact of inter-regional transmission. It seems to me that the important comparison is the relative cost within regions.

Jim

Richard Mignogna
October 19, 2012

I agree with both of the above comments which indicate that, while there appears to be some economy of scale, it may not be sufficient to overwhelm other factors. Also, there are significant variations by region and wind resource that need to be taken into account for any comparison to be meaningful. One factor that isn't shown, but may be inferred, are the land acquisition costs both over time and by region. It would be interesting to see the project development cost comparison if you tease out the land acquisition cost from the analysis.

James Palmer
October 19, 2012

The most recent report is available at:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/2011_wind_technologies_market_report_slides.pdf

Change the year to access the reports back to 2008.

John Farrell
October 19, 2012

@James
When I originally did the research in mid-2011, that new data wasn't released. I stand corrected.

Sincerely,
John

James Palmer
October 19, 2012

This is very odd--why are you using the 2009 report's chart (page 42) rather than the 2011 report's chart (page 31) to determine "most economical size"? Maybe because the current data do not so nicely demonstrate your bias? Or is it that you are just slow to catch up on your reading?

For other readers--there is virtually no difference in efficiency between projects in the 20-200+ MW range, and smaller projects have a very small penalty. There is now no reason that projects should be sized for economic reasons--they should be sized for the environmental and social conditions of the site.

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John Farrell

John Farrell directs the Energy Self-Reliant States and Communities program at ILSR and he focuses on energy policy developments that best expand the benefits of local ownership and dispersed generation of renewable energy. His latest paper,...