Wind Turbine Size

Larger wind turbines are more efficient than smaller ones. I took data for small Skytstream systems (02. - 3.0 kW) and found that:

P = kD^1.7

where P is power, D is diameter, and k is a constant.

The implication is that a small home turbine is a poor investment (a letter to the Columbus Dispatch about a month ago stated that one cost him about $1/kWh, whereas we pay about 9 cents). It would appear that it would be better for several people in an area band together and build a big one. However, on Tueaday, the President of AEP said that they were not building a turbine farm on Lake Erie because it would have been 'inefficient and uneconomical.'

I located some data comparing wind to nuclear. For the Wolfe Island Plant in Ontario, the cost was about $2/W, while the expected cost of nuclear construction from Moody's is expected to be $6/W. But wind powers about 375 homes/MW, while nuclear powers 590 homes/MW (Progress Energy FL estimate). Thus the cost per home is $5,300 for wind and $10,200 for nuclear. I would guess that the cost of operation per kW is similar for the two technologies, but need to check this.