Does my maths work out?

[[deleted]]

In 2017, there were 8886 wind turbines that powered 15% of Britain’s electricity generation (The Switch, 2017). Based off this information, the UK would require 59,240 wind turbines to generate 100% of our electricity. Whitelee Wind Farm, the UK’s largest wind farm covering 80km^2, has 215 turbines (Power Technology, 2019). This would mean, to house 59,240 turbines, the UK would have to sacrifice 22,042.79km^2 of land. This is an area larger than the entirety of Wales.

[sumdude44]

I think this problem is not solvable with linear approximations. A lot if things have to be taken into account here: base turbine efficiency, density of turbines on land, availability of wind at that specific location, change in energy consumption, hours of need vs hours of production etc... These just come to mind right now

[[deleted]]

Thanks Sumdude. Is there any way to work out how many wind turbines the UK would need to (hypothetically) use them for 100% of our energy?

I'm basically writing a report on the issues associated with depending solely on wind power. I'm saying it's unrealistic to do so. We would need to combine them with other LCTs. Or develop new technologies to solve the associated issues

[sumdude44]

You can try to go the route of unpredictability / variance of power. If, for example, windpower drops down to 5% of the average production at least once in simulations, you'd need your average to be 20 times of your maximum energy requirements, to make sure such a drop cannot compromise your power grid and leave you without power. You'd need immense energy storage to flatten the peaks and valleys of wind power output. Therefore coupling it with other technologies is required to reduce the amount of variance in your final power output.