Wind turbines, a rapidly growing sector of electricity generation, produce varied amounts of electricity based on a few variables. These variables include the size of the wind turbine, also known as power rating, and how fast the wind travels at the turbine’s location.
Wind turbines have a power rating usually ranging from 250 watts (enough to charge a battery) to 10-kW (enough to power a typical household) to 6-MW (enough to power over 1600 households).
The world’s largest wind turbines, produced in Northern Germany, stand at a height of 650 ft and has a diameter of 413 ft. The world’s largest wind farm is located in Texas at the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center. This wind farm has 421 wind turbines which produce enough energy to power 220,000 homes per year. In 2006, wind energy produced enough electricity in the U.S. to serve more than 2.4 million households. Although this is a fairly large number of households, it is only about 0.4 percent of the nation’s total electricity consumption.
Wind energy is growing rapidly in the United States as well as other parts of the world. From 2002 to 2006 wind-generated electricity increased by 2.5 times.